Julie Andrews almost died filming the iconic Mary Poppins umbrella scene

It's one of the most memorable scenes of Mary Poppins, but Julie Andrews has revealed filming it almost killed her.

The 80-year-old appeared on The Late Show over the weekend where she told Stephen Colbert about a near-fatal accident that happened while she was filming the 1964 movie.

Andrews explained that to pull off the flying sequence, she actually performed the stunt herself while wearing a painful harness. But the supposedly load-bearing wires she was attached to high above the stage didn’t end up working as planned.

"There was a very dangerous day right at the end of filming when I was in this excruciatingly painful harness," Andrews told Colbert.

"And I was hanging around up there for the longest time with the umbrella."

After floating in the sky for quite some time, Andrews sensed the wires giving out on her.

“I thought I felt the wire leave [and] drop about six inches ... I was nervous,” Andrews recalled. “So, I called down and I said, ‘Excuse me, when you do let me down, could you let me down really gently, because I felt myself slip and I just don’t feel too safe up here.’”

She was reassured by the crew that they'd be able to ease her down gradually - but they were wrong.

"I plummeted to the stage," Andrews said. "I did. And there was an awful silence for a minute and I did let fly with a few Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, I have to admit."

In case it's been a while since you've watched the Disney classic, you can watch the moment Mary Poppins flies in with her umbrella here: