The iconic umbrella scene from Mary Poppins almost cost Julie Andrews her life

When you think of Mary Poppins, the first scene that will pop into almost everyone's head is the one where she's flying away with her umbrella, but apparently it wasn't all smooth sailing for Andrews.

The 80-year old recently appeared on The Late Show where she told Stephen Colbert about her brush with death while filming the scene and wearing a very old fashioned harness.

“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.”

She thought that she felt the wires giving out on her, so she called out to the crew to let her down - "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."

They told her that she would be lowered back down gradually, but she in for quite the surprise, “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.”

Watch the interview for yourself here:

 And if you need a reminder of what the iconic scene looked like: