All About Julie Andrews’ 3 Children: Emma, Amelia, and Joanna

Julie Andrews might be known for her memorable turns as Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp, but the Oscar winner is most proud of her role as mom. The legendary English actress has three daughters: Emma Walton, Amelia “Amy” Edwards, and Joanna Edwards.

She shares Emma with her first husband, costume designer Tony Walton, whom she remained friends with until his death in 2022.  “Tony was my dearest and oldest friend. He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes and his talent was simply monumental. I will miss him more than I can say,” Andrews told People that year.

“We are a huge, blended family and as we hold each other close, we take comfort knowing that he lives on, not only in his children and grandchildren, but in the memories of thousands who cherished his warmth and generosity and the glorious gifts he gave us,” she added.

Andrews and her second husband, director Blake Edwards, expanded their family by two, welcoming daughters Amelia and Joanna. Andrews and Edwards were married from 1969 until his death in 2010. The 89-year-old actress is also the stepmother of Edwards’ two children from his first marriage, Jennifer Edwards and Geoffrey Edwards.

While now a grandmother and great-grandmother, Andrews hasn’t retired from acting. In 2025, she nabbed her 12th Emmy nomination for her voice-over performance as Lady Whistledown in Netflix’s hit royal romance, Bridgerton—her fourth consecutive nomination for that role.

The veteran performer is also a New York Times best-selling children’s book author with her oldest daughter, Emma, penning The Very Fairy Princess and Dump The Dump Truck among other works. In a 2020 joint appearance with Emma on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Andrews shared that while pregnant, she “didn’t think that [she] loved kids that much.” After becoming a mom, her feelings changed. “[Motherhood] is a great gift in every way,” she told Clarkson.

Here’s everything to know about Julie Andrews’ three children.

Emma Kate Walton Hamilton 

Andrews welcomed Emma Kate Walton, her first child with then-husband Tony Walton, on November 27, 1962 in London, England. One of her godmothers is legendary comedian Carol Burnett, a longtime friend of Andrews’.

At an early age, Emma understood her mother’s acting career as something separate from her home life. Still, watching Andrews’ films had an effect on her. 

“I had an interesting experience in terms of my relationship with The Sound of Music,” she recalled on the Our Mothers Ourselves podcast in 2020. “As a young child, I couldn’t watch it all the way through. I would run out of the room in tears, because I couldn’t bear to see my mother cry [on-screen].”

Following in her multi-hyphenate mother’s footsteps, Emma dabbled in acting in the ‘80s, appearing in programs like As the World Turns, That’s Life!, and Micki + Maude. Her true calling, however, was becoming a children’s book author. 

After winning a Grammy for narrating the Julie Andrews’ Collection Of Poems, Songs, And Lullabies audiobook, she began collaborating with her mother on original children’s books. The duo’s best-selling Dumpy the Dump Truck series was primarily illustrated by her father, Walton, making the project a true family affair.

When Andrews lost her famous soprano as the result of a vocal chord surgery in the late ‘90s, she initially lamented her inability to sing. Becoming a children’s book author and inspiring a new generation helped her reclaim her voice.

“I was bemoaning my fate to Emma,” the actress said on a CBS Sunday Morning appearance with her daughter, “and she said, ‘Oh Mom, you’ve just found another way of sharing your voice. And I tell you, it hit me so hard what she said, and I’ve never really [bemoaned] it since.”

According to her professional website, Emma attended Brown University as a theater major and later received an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook University. She shares two adult children with her husband, actor and acting coach Steve Hamilton.

Amelia “Amy” Leigh Edwards 

Andrews’ second daughter, Amelia Leigh Edwards, was born in Vietnam in 1974. Andrews and her husband, director Blake Edwards, adopted Amelia when she was two months old. Amelia has also gone by Amy but prefers Amelia, according to a 2024 interview her step-sister Jennifer Edwards did with Closer Weekly.

“We wanted a child, and it hadn’t happened,” Andrews told Australian Women’s Weekly of her decision to adopt in an October 2015 interview. “Amy came into our lives, and it was wonderful. Then Saigon began to fall and within three months, we had another [child, daughter Joanna Lynne].”

Like her older sister, Amelia traveled with her parents for their work, but she mostly grew up in the family’s permanent home in Gstaad, Switzerland. In a 1977 interview with People, Andrews described Gstaad as “a village, really, with duckies, piggies and horses.”

According to her IMDB profile, the 51-year-old had a brief role in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, which her mother co-starred in with actress Anne Hathaway. Otherwise, she’s lived a life out of the spotlight.

Joanna Lynne Edwards

Andrews and Edwards adopted another daughter, Joanna Lynne Edwards, in 1975. “Suddenly Joanna was with us and [she and Amelia] were not sisters, but like sisters,” Andrews said of welcoming her youngest daughter during a 2015 interview with Australian Women’s Weekly.

Like Amelia, Joanna prefers to stay out of the public eye. However, her famous mother described her daughters’ early lives in her 2019 book Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years. In her memoir, Andrews mentions that her children attended UCLA Lab School and that Joanna had affinities for horseback riding and reading, while her big sister Amelia preferred ballet.

The Mary Poppins star also details her visit to postwar Vietnam in the early ‘80s as part of a humanitarian delegation. She subsequently advocated for the rights of children and orphans in Vietnam and Cambodia—particularly the children of American servicemen—to emigrate to the United States, per a 2020 profile in The Guardian.