The ‘Sound of Music’ star says she almost died when filming the classic movie ‘Mary Poppins’ as she recalls the scary experience of shooting the iconic umbrella scene.

AceShowbiz –
Dame Julie Andrews can’t believe she survived a ‘flying’ scene she filmed at the end of “Mary Poppins“.

The star performed her own stunts in the beloved 1964 film about the magical nanny, but admits technology was very basic back then and she had to spend hours dangling above a sound stage floor.

“I wore a flying harness, which was pretty excruciating because it was two steel plates that kind of dug into one’s hips,” she tells “Live with Kelly and Ryan“. “They saved all the really difficult, really hard stuff until the very last day of shooting, in case of an accident, I guess – in which case most of the film was already in the can.”

Things seemed to be going fine when she was first suspended high above the sound stage, but then Andrews felt sure something was wrong: “I suddenly got very nervous and thought I felt the rope give a little bit, or the wire, so I called down from way up in the ceiling and said, ‘Could you let me down a little… because I think the wire gave,’ at which point I plummeted to the stage.”

Andrews is convinced the only thing that saved her was the pulley system used to put her in the air in the first place.

“I was on counter weights and all of that, so I hit (the stage) pretty heavily,” she recalls. “I’m glad I was weighted, let me say.”