Julie Christie
Birth name	Julie Frances Christie
Born	April 14, 1941 (1941-04-14) (age 66) Assam, India
Awards Academy Awards Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role Winner: 1965 Darling Nominated: 1971 McCabe & Mrs. Miller Nominated: 1997 Afterglow BAFTA Awards Best Actress in a Leading Role Winner: 1965 Darling

Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1941) is an Academy Award-winning English film actress. She was also a pop icon of the Swinging London era of the 1960s.

Biography

Early life

Christie was born in Assam, India, then part of the British Empire, as one of two children. Her mother, Rosemary Ramsden, was a Welsh-born painter and childhood friend of actor Richard Burton. Her father, Frank St. John Christie, ran the tea plantation around which Christie grew up. She had a brother and a half-sibling from her father's affair with an Indian mistress.[1] Christie's parents separated during her childhood. She was baptized in the Anglican religion,[1] and studied at a convent school in England (from which she was later expelled), also living with a foster mother from the age of six.[2] After her parents' divorce, Christie spent time with her mother in rural Wales. As a teenager she attended Wycombe Court, a boarding school for girls in Buckinghamshire, and played the role of the Dauphin in a school production of George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan". She later studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama[3] before getting her big break in 1961 in a science fiction series on BBC television, entitled A for Andromeda.

Early career

Christie's first major film role was as Liz, the friend and would-be lover of the eponymous Billy Liar played by Tom Courtenay in the 1963 film directed by John Schlesinger. Schlesinger, who only cast Christie after another actress dropped out of his film, directed her in her breakthrough role, as the amoral model Diana Scott in Darling (1965), a role which the producers originally offered to Shirley MacLaine. Though virtually unknown before Darling (1965), Christie ended the year 1965 by appearing as Lara Antipova in David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (1965), which was one of the all-time box office hits, and as Dasiy Battles in Young Cassidy, the John Ford-Jack Cardiff directed biopic of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. In 1966, the 25-year-old Christie won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Darling (1965). Later, she played Thomas Hardy's heroine Bathsheba Everdene in Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and the lead character, Petulia Danner, (opposite George C. Scott) in Richard Lester's Petulia (1968).

In the 1970s, Christie starred in such films as Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971) (her second Best Actress Oscar nomination), The Go-Between (again co-starring Alan Bates, 1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), Altman's classic Nashville (also 1975, in an amusing cameo as herself opposite Karen Black and Henry Gibson), Demon Seed (1977), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). She moved to Hollywood during the decade, where she had a high-profile (1967-1974), but intermittent relationship with actor Warren Beatty who described her as "the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person I had ever known".[4] Following the end of the relationship, she returned to the United Kingdom, where she lived on a farm in Wales. Never a prolific actress, even at the height of her fame and bankability in the 1960s, Christie made fewer and fewer films in the 1980s. She had a major supporting role in Sidney Lumet's Power (1986), but other than that, she avoided appearances in large budget films and appeared in riskier fare.

Christie has turned down many leading roles in films such as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Anne of the Thousand Days and The Greek Tycoon. Christie also signed on to play the female lead in American Gigolo opposite Richard Gere, however when Gere dropped out and John Travolta was cast in the role, Christie too dropped out from the project. Gere changed his mind and took back the role, however it was too late for Christie as her part was already taken by Lauren Hutton. Julie Christie also had to drop out of the leading role in Agatha due to breaking her wrist whilst roller-skating; the part was filled by Vanessa Redgrave.[citation needed]

Later work

Christie made a comeback with her appearance as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996). Despite her training, it was her first-ever venture into Shakespeare. She next starred as the unhappy wife in Alan Rudolph's domestic comedy-drama Afterglow (1997). Critics were delighted with her performance, for which she received her third Oscar nomination. However, rather than capitalizing on her comeback, Christie continued her nonchalant attitude towards acting. Since her last Oscar nomination, she has appeared mostly in small roles in English and American films.

Christie's latest portrayal is the female lead in Away From Her, a film about a long-married Canadian couple coping with the wife's Alzheimer's disease. Based on the Alice Munro short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain", the movie is the first feature film directed by Christie's sometime co-star, Canadian actress Sarah Polley. She only took the role, she says, as Polley is her friend. On her part, Polley said that Christie liked her script but initially turned it down as she was ambivalent about acting. It took several months of persuasion by Polley before Christie finally accepted the role, which was written with her in mind.

Christie made a brief appearance in the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), playing Madame Rosmerta. That same year, she also appeared in two other high-profile films: Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, and Marc Forster's Finding Neverland, in which she played Kate Winslet's mother.

Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2006 as part of the TIFF's Gala showcase, Away From Her drew rave reviews from the trade press, including the Hollywood Reporter, and the three Toronto dailies. The critics singled out the performances of Christie and her co-star, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, and Polley's assured direction.[citation needed]

Personal life

Christie has never married. Her long-time partner (since 1979) is The Guardian journalist Duncan Campbell, who prompted her reluctant return to Los Angeles, California, as that is where he has been based.

Since the 1970s, Christie has been politically active and involved in multiple causes, including animal rights, environmental protection, and the anti-nuclear power movement.

Filmography

• Billy Liar (1963)
• Darling (1965)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
• Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967)
• Petulia (1968)
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
• The Go-Between (1971)
• Don't Look Now (1973)
• Shampoo (1975)
• Nashville (1975)
• Demon Seed (1977)
• Heaven Can Wait (1978)
• Memoirs of a Survivor (1981)
• The Return of the Soldier (1982)
• Heat and Dust (1983)
• The Railway Station Man (1992)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Afterglow (1997)
• Belphégor - Le fantôme du Louvre (2001)
• No Such Thing (2001)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• Finding Neverland (2004)
• Troy (2004)
• Away From Her (2006)

References

External links

• Julie Christie at the Internet Movie Database
• Julie Christie biography and filmography at the BFI's Screenonline
• Julie Christie at TV.com
• BBC News | Entertainment | Actress Christie on Alzheimer's role