Andrew Gold mother was singer Marni Nixon, who provided the singing voice for numerous actresses, notably Natalie Wood in "West Side Story", Deborah Kerr in "The King and I", and Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady"; his father was Ernest Gold, an Austrian-born composer who won an Academy Award for his score for the movie "Exodus". He had two younger sisters. Gold began writing songs at the age of 13. Abroad in England for school, the 16-year-old Gold scored his first recording contract on the strength of a selection of demos he submitted to Polydor Records' London office. That contract resulted in
Marni Nixon People's Concerts", including in 1960, singing "Improvisation sur Mallarmé I" from "Pli selon pli" by Pierre Boulez, and on April 9, 1961, in a program entitled "Folk Music in the Concert Hall", singing three "Songs of the Auvergne" by Joseph Canteloube. Before "My Fair Lady" was released in theatres in 1964, Nixon played Eliza in a revival of the musical at New York City Center. Nixon's first onscreen appearance was as Sister Sophia in the 1965 film "The Sound of Music". In the DVD commentary to the film, director Robert Wise comments that audiences were finally able to see the