Julie Andrews is done with on-screen acting, she said in a new interview.
The 90-year-old icon told InStyle on Monday that she would not be reprising her role in the third installment of The Princess Diaries film series alongside Anne Hathaway. Andrews said that she may never return to screen acting at all. “I think I probably passed… I think I’m retired, really, would be about the best description for that,” she told the site.
Andrews, who was in her mid-60s when she starred in the original 2001 film, added that the film’s creative team “asked me all last year if I would be keen to do it. It was very, very hard to say ‘no,’ but I did because I thought I had a wonderful ride, and this one I felt would flourish very well and wouldn’t need Granny going in there at my age.”
Andrews has continued her legendary career with voice acting roles, including narrating the Netflix hit series Bridgerton as Lady Whistledown. Her other latest voice roles include Minions: The Rise of Gru, The King’s Daughter, and Aquaman.
“I do it mostly to keep my brain alive,” she told InStyle, explaining that she enjoys being able to record her lines from the comfort of her home.
As such, the Oscar-winning star won’t return as Queen Clarisse Renaldi in The Princess Diaries, in which Andrews plays the royal grandmother to normal San Francisco teen Mia (Hathaway) in the first two films, released in 2001 and 2004, respectively.
Hathaway revealed that she was reprising her role in the upcoming sequel in 2024, and has expressed her enthusiastic support for having Andrews join her. “We would go to where she was and put a green screen behind her and just make it happen,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2022.
Andrews was clear early on about her doubts, as she told Access Hollywood the same year, “I think we know that it’s probably not going to be possible. It was talked about very shortly after 2 came out, but it’s now how many years since then? And I am that much older, and Annie the princess, our queen, is so much older. And I am not sure whether it would float or run.”
She added, “I very much doubt” that she would reprise the role.
Andrews, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1965 for Mary Poppins and has picked up several Emmy wins since for The Julie Andrews Hour, Broadway: The American Musical, and Bridgerton, as well as three Grammys and three Tony Award nominations, now lives with arthritis and prefers to stay out of the public eye, she told InStyle.
Hathaway, who is expecting her third child with her husband Adam Shulman, said earlier this month that while she doesn’t know when she can begin production on the film after welcoming her new baby, she believes the story will be one that fans will love. “I think we’ve had a story breakthrough,” she said.
“The script that we were working on—we kind of had to start over with this new direction, which is not the update I think anybody wants, but we all feel really good that this is gonna be the one,” she added.
