The Truth About Julie Andrews' Relationship With Blake Edwards

As Maria von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," Julie Andrews is famous for portraying half of one of cinema's most wholesome couples. It turns out that her real-life romance with director Blake Edwards (the man behind "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and the "Pink Panther" movies starring Peter Sellers) had moments that were just as sweet. In many ways, Andrews' and Edwards' relationship was more complicated than anything Hollywood would have depicted during its Golden Age. They were both each other's second spouses, and Edwards battled depression and hypochondria throughout their relationship, according to Honey. However, they had a meet-cute to rival any rom-com and, once they found each other, they stayed together until parted by Edwards' death in 2010.

"We were married 41 years and it was a love story, it was," Andrews told "Good Morning Britain" in 2015 (quoted by Entertainment Tonight). "Success in our marriage was to take it one day at a time and so, lo and behold, 41 years later there we still were."

However, it would take Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards a while to go from meet-cute to wedding bells. That's because they were both married to other people at the time of their encounter. Andrews' first husband was a childhood friend, Tony Walton, according to the Academy of Achievement. They reconnected while she was playing Eliza Doolittle in the London production of "My Fair Lady" and he was launching a career as a costume and set designer for the stage. They were married in 1959 and had one daughter together, Emma, in 1962. Edwards, meanwhile, had married actress and costume designer Patricia Walker in 1953, according to AB-TC. He had two children with her, Geoffrey and Jennifer, according to Honey.

By 1967, both of their first marriages had ended in divorce. Andrews and Walton had to deal with the perils of maintaining a long-distance marriage while her film career took off in the U.S. following her starring role in "Mary Poppins" in 1963 and subsequent Oscar win, according to People. They would send each other tapes, but eventually that wasn't enough. Edwards, meanwhile, exited a relationship with Walker that another People article described as "stormy." Andrews and Edwards reunited as their first marriages were falling apart and began dating shortly after they both divorced their first spouses, according to Honey.

Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards went on to spend the next four decades together raising a blended family. They co-parented the three children they'd had during their previous marriages — Emma, Geoffrey, and Jennifer — and also adopted two orphans from Vietnam named Amy and Joanna, according to Honey. "We wanted a child and weren't being successful," Andrews told People in 1977. "It's been wonderful to watch two pale, sad-eyed creatures blossom." During the first years of their marriage, Andrews took a partial break from her career to focus on their family, but Edwards stepped up to home plate when she did an ABC variety series in 1973. "Blake and I swapped roles completely," she told People. 

Edwards went on to direct Andrews in 1979's "10" and 1981's "S.O.B.," which helped restore the pair's reputation. Then, they made "Victor/Victoria" in 1982. The film was a major success that helped Andrews move beyond her squeaky-clean image, earning them both Oscar nominations — her for best actress, and Edwards for best adapted screenplay (via IMDb). When Edwards finally won an honorary Oscar in 2004, he thanked his wife and muse — "the beautiful English broad with the incomparable soprano and promiscuous vocabulary" (via Hollywood Suite).