Actress Julie Andrews reveals losing her voice was 'devastating'

Julie Andrews has revealed how the sound of her music was stolen by a medical disaster.

In 1997, the 79-year-old actress had noncancerous nodules removed from her vocal chords and woke up from surgery to find her iconic voice had disappeared, People Magazine reported.

The Sound of Music star said that if it had happened earlier, it would have been really devastating, adding "as it was, it was devastating".

Now, nearly 20 years after the botched surgery, Andrews reveals that her vocal trauma forced her to develop other creative outlets, adding that for a while, she was in total denial, but then she had to do something, which was to pen dozens of books, including co-authoring the Dumpy the Dumptruck and The Very Fairy Princess children's' series with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.

She added that what she says in the The Sound of Music is true, "A door closes and a window opens", noting that had she not lost her voice, she would never have written these books and discovered that pleasure.

Read: Julie Andrews spills beans on 'Sound of Music' on movie's 50th anniversary