Which vocal type and range did the English actress Julie Andrews use in her theater and movie roles?

Julie Andrews (born 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. Throughout her career, she used her soprano voice, described as light, bright and operatic in tone. Soprano is a type of classical female singing voice having the highest vocal range of all voice types, ranging easily through two octaves above middle C. The word is Italian literally meaning ‘high’ from ‘sopra’ (above) derived from the Latin ‘supra’ (above or over).

When she was a young girl, her parents took her to a throat specialist and the doctor concluded that she had “an almost adult larynx”. Despite the continual encouragement to pursue opera by her voice teacher, Andrews felt that her voice was unsuited for the genre and “too big a stretch”.

Andrews has been active in the performing arts since 1945. As a child actress and singer, she appeared in the West End in 1948 and then made her Broadway debut in ‘The Boy Friend’ (1954). Billed as “Britain’s youngest prima donna”, she rose to prominence in a series of musical plays.

Andrews was forced to stop stage performances in 1997 when she developed hoarseness in her voice. Subsequently she underwent surgery for non-cancerous nodules in her throat. She’s emerged from the surgery with permanent damage that terminated her singing and made her speaking raspy.

Since 2000 she has had 4 surgeries to improve her speaking voice.