Combining radiant, striking beauty and genuine talent, Julie Christie emerged as one of the more engaging female leads of the 1960s and 70s. She got her break as star of British TV’s “A For Andromeda” (1960) and had small parts in two Ken Annakin films before achieving big-screen success with leading roles in John Schlesinger’s “Billy Liar” (1963) and the tailor-made “Darling” (1965), for which she won an Oscar as Best Actress. Although usually exemplifying the sexually liberated, contemporary woman, Christie also starred as the object of desire in lavish period films: David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), with Omar Sharif, and Schlesinger’s “Far From the Madding Crowd” and Joseph Losey’s “The Go-Between” (both 1971), alongside Alan Bates.
Christie moved to the United States in the 1970s; her sojourn there distinguished by three movies she made with lover (and later pal) Warren Beatty. She was excellent as Beatty’s business partner in Robert Altman’s deconstructionist Western “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination) and handled her assignment in Hal Ashby’s “Shampoo” (1975) with ease and flair. Her final dismissal of Beatty (who also co-scripted with Robert Towne) was a dramatic highlight of the film. As the woman who inspires Beatty in the remake “Heaven Can Wait” (1978), however, Christie seemed miscast but still pulled off her part as the love interest who makes the connection between two distinct vessels the Beatty animus occupies. Perhaps her best performance of the decade was for her cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg in the downright scary yet erotic thriller “Don’t Look Now” (1973). Co-starring with Donald Sutherland, they played a couple who encounter the supernatural in Venice while trying to recover from their daughter’s drowning.
Since the 80s, the extremely private Christie has chosen fewer, and lower profile, projects, while continuing to turn in exemplary performances, as in “Heat and Dust” (1983), “Miss Mary” (1986) and as the ravishingly beautiful, alcoholic widow in the otherwise disappointing “Fools of Fortune” (1990). Reuniting with director Schlesinger and frequent co-star Alan Bates, she showed herself at her very best in the HBO production of “Separate Tables” (1983). Christie returned to films after a six year absence to co-star with Dennis Quaid in the medieval epic “Dragonheart” and went on to co-star as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh’s full-length version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (both 1996). The following year, she proved once again how seductive she could be–to co-stars and moviegoers alike–as a former B movie actress engaging in an extramarital affair with a much younger man in Alan Rudolph’s “Afterglow”, for which she received her third Oscar nomination as Best Actress.
Despite the late-career fanfare, Christie continued to work at her own pace and generally eschewed commercial fare for more visionary and independent minded projects, including supporting turns in Hal Hartley’s mythic “No Such Thing” (2001), Rudolf van den Berg’s poignant “Snapshot” (2002) opposite Burt Reynolds, and the little-seen romantic comedy “I’m With Lucy” (2002). Her next film was far more high-profile, with the actress playing Thetis, the mother of Brad Pitt’s Achilles in “Troy” (2004), the action-oriented adaptation of Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War; the actress was better served with her subsequent role in “Finding Neverland” (2004), playing the stern, disapproving matriarch of a family who has captured the imagination of “Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp).
- Also Credited As:
Julie Frances Christie
- Born:
on 04/14/41 in Chukua, Assam, India
- Job Titles:
Actor, Washed bottles at Schweppes
Family
- Brother: Clive Christie.
- Father: Frank St John Christie. deceased
- Mother: Rosemary Christie. deceased
Significant Others
- Companion: Don Bessant. together in the late 1960s
- Companion: Duncan Campbell. together since c. 1977; British
- Companion: Warren Beatty. together in the late 1960s and early 1970s; co-starred together in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Shampoo” (1975) and “Heaven Can Wait” (1978)
Education
- Central School of Speech and Drama, London, England
Milestones
- 1948 Sent to England to attend boarding school at age seven (date approximate)
- 1957 Stage debut with Frinton-on-Sea Repertory
- 1960 Starred in TV series “A for Andromeda”
- 1962 Film acting debut in “Crooks Anonymous”
- 1963 First starring film role in John Schlesinger’s “Billy Liar”
- 1963 Joined the Birmingham Repertory Company
- 1964 Broadway debut with the RSC in “The Comedy of Errors”
- 1964 Performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company; toured Europe and USA with company in “The Comedy of Errors”, starring Paul Scofield
- 1965 Appeared in small role in “Young Cassidy” (the only sequences directed by John Ford before he became ill)
- 1965 Starred opposite Omar Sharif as the ill-fated Lara in David Lean’s “Dr Zhivago”
- 1965 Won Academy Award for her performance in Schlesinger’s “Darling”
- 1967 Moved to L.A.
- 1967 Reteamed with Schlesinger for “Far From the Madding Crowd”, co-starring Alan Bates and Terrence Stamp
- 1971 First of three starring turns opposite Warren Beatty in Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”; nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress
- 1973 Acted opposite Donald Sutherland in Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now”; Roeg had served as cinematographer for three of Christie’s earlier films
- 1973 Co-starred on Broadway in Mike Nichols’ staging of “Uncle Vanya”
- 1975 Was in the ensemble cast of “Shampoo”, directed by Hal Ashby and co-written by Warren Beatty
- 1978 Played female lead in “Heaven Can Wait”, a remake of “Here Comes, Mr. Jordan”, co-written, co-directed and starring Beatty
- 1983 Reunited with Schlesinger and frequent co-star Alan Bates for the HBo remake of “Separate Tables”
- 1986 Last mainstream Hollywood vehicle to date, Sidney Lumet’s “Power”
- 1986 Worked with Argentine director Maria Luisa Bemberg, playing a stern English governness who comes to work for a rich and powerful Argentine family in “Miss Mary”
- 1992 Was one of 160 people who signed an advertisement which ran in THE TIMES (of London) urging the legalization of marijuana
- 1995 Starred in West End revival of Harold Pinter’s “Old Times”
- 1996 Played Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet”
- 1996 Portrayed a rich woman exploited by her husband in Dennis Potter’s miniseries “Karaoke” (aired in USA on Bravo)
- 1996 Returned to screen acting after six year absence in “Dragonheart”
- 1997 Acted the part of a former B-movie actress in Alan Rudolph’s “Afterglow”; received third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress
- 2001 Appeared in writer-director Hall Hartley’s “No Such Thing”
- 2002 Co-starred with Burt Reynolds in “Snapshots”
- 2004 Cast as Madame Rosmerta in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” directed by Alfonso Cuarón
- 2004 Cast as Mrs. Emma du Maurier, the disapproving mother of Sylvia (Kate Winslet) in “Finding Neverland” which details the experiences of ‘Peter Pan’ author J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp)
- 2004 Played Thetis, mother of Achilles (Brad Pitt) in director Wolfgang Petersen’s epic “Troy”
- Toured the south of England in “Suzanna Andler”, a play by Marguerite Duras (“Hiroshima, Mon Amour”)
