“Good evening everyone, I am Julie Andrews and I am pleased to welcome you to the seventh World Parkinson’s Congress.” With these words, the British actress (Surrey, 90 years old), the magical Mary Poppins in the 1964 classic and the sweet Maria in The Sound of Music (1965), addressed the attendees of the seventh congress on the disease in a video message, published on the event’s own YouTube channel this Monday, May 25. In the video, the nonagenarian performer speaks to the camera from what appears to be a pleasant living room overlooking a garden, in an intervention of just over thirty seconds that marked her reappearance at a public event. She has not walked a red carpet since 2023, and the latest photos of her are from April 2024, shopping in the Hamptons (New York), aided by a cane. That said, Andrews is not professionally retired; since 2020 she has been the voice-over of the successful series Bridgerton on Netflix.
“Her participation is very valuable while a cure for this terrible disease is sought,” her message to the attendees continues, with which Andrews lends her image to the cause of those fighting Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative condition about which, in the same video, she states: “I know very well how devastating it can be.” Without giving more details about what exactly she is referring to or whether she is speaking about herself or someone close, these words, added to her scarce public appearances, leave the doubt as to whether she herself suffers from the disease.
“I hope we can all become a beacon of light to stop it in its tracks. Count on me as a guiding thread. Thank you,” the performer concludes her contribution to the congress, which has also had the support of another famous actor, Steve Carell (The Office), who in another video explained that some of his friends and colleagues suffer from the disease, betting that: “Together we can make a difference” and end it.
Discovered two centuries ago, Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease (the first is Alzheimer’s), and currently has no known cause or cure. If genetics explains only part of the cases, the rest are related to a complex interaction of factors, from toxic agents like pesticides to viral infections and problems in the gut-brain connection. Among the symptoms of the disease, identified by British physician James Parkinson in the 19th century, are involuntary tremors, body stiffness, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and a greater susceptibility to infections. Earlier this year, the discovery of a brain network connecting body and mind began to point towards an improvement in current treatments.
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Although Andrews has not clarified how she is related to Parkinson’s, her video for the congress shows that, at 90 years old and after 70 years of career, she is still in good shape. If she has not been seen publicly in recent years, she has remained active, as part of the cast of the aforementioned period production, in which she voices the narrator of the palace intrigues — which will return, by the way, in a new season in 2027, accelerated by its good results — that earned her an Emmy award for best voice-over performance in 2025. Although Andrews, according to what she herself said in a 2022 program, does not personally know the cast because she records very far from them. “Of course, sometimes I see them on the show,” she added.
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Long before the Netflix success, the actress experienced a media resurgence with the two Princess Diaries movies (2001 and 2004), alongside a very young Anne Hathaway. Among her latest projects, this summer the children’s book Shy will be released, which she collaborated on with her eldest daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, with whom she previously published other children’s titles, such as The Very Fairy Princess. All her work is duly documented on her Instagram (with 486,000 followers), a profile in which there are hardly any current photos of her or glimpses of her private life.
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