Julie Christie

Early career

Christie made her professional stage debut in 1957, and her first screen roles were on British television. Her earliest role to gain attention was in BBC serial A for Andromeda (1961). She was a contender for the role of Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film, Dr. No, but producer Albert R. Broccoli reportedly thought her breasts were too small.^[9]

1960s

Christie appeared in two comedies for Independent Artists: Crooks Anonymous and The Fast Lady (both 1962). Her breakthrough role was as Liz, the friend and would-be lover of the eponymous character played by Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar (1963), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination. The director, John Schlesinger cast Christie only after another actress, Topsy Jane, had dropped out of the film.^[10][11] Christie appeared as Daisy Battles in Young Cassidy (1965), a biopic of Irish playwright Seán O'Casey, co-directed by Jack Cardiff and (uncredited) John Ford.

Her role as an amoral model in Darling (also 1965) led to Christie becoming known internationally; it also inspired the singer Tony Christie to take his stage name from Christie.^[12] Directed by Schlesinger and co-starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, Christie had only been cast in the lead role after Schlesinger insisted, the studio having wanted Shirley MacLaine.^[13] She received the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role for her performance.^[14]

In David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (also 1965), adapted from the epic/romance novel by Boris Pasternak, Christie's role as Lara Antipova became her best known. The film was a major box-office success.^[15] As of 2019^[update], Doctor Zhivago is the 8th highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation.^[16] According to Life magazine, 1965 was "The Year of Julie Christie".^[17]

After dual roles in François Truffaut's adaptation of the Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966), starring with Oskar Werner, she appeared as Thomas Hardy's heroine Bathsheba Everdene in Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). After moving to Los Angeles in 1967 ("I was there because of a lot of American boyfriends"), she appeared in the title role of Richard Lester's Petulia (1968), co-starring with George C. Scott.^[18] Christie's persona as the swinging sixties British woman she had embodied in Billy Liar and Darling was further cemented by her appearance in the documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. In 1967, Time magazine said of her: "What Julie Christie wears has more real impact on fashion than all the clothes of the ten best-dressed women combined".^[19]

1970s

In Joseph Losey's romantic drama The Go-Between (1971), Christie had a lead role along with Alan Bates. The film won the Grand Prix, then the main award at the Cannes Film Festival. She earned a second Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as a brothel madam in Robert Altman's postmodern western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (also 1971). The film was the first of three collaborations between Christie and Warren Beatty, who described her as "the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person I had ever known".^[7] The couple had a high-profile but intermittent relationship between 1967 and 1974. After the relationship ended, they worked together again in the comedies Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).

Her other films during the decade were Nicolas Roeg's thriller Don't Look Now (1973), based on a story by Daphne du Maurier, in which she co-starred with Donald Sutherland, and the science-fiction/horror film Demon Seed (1977), based on the novel of the same name by Dean Koontz and directed by Donald Cammell. Don't Look Now in particular has received acclaim, with Christie nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and in 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine ranked it the greatest British film ever.^[20]

Christie returned to the United Kingdom in 1977, living on a farm in Wales. In 1979, she was a member of the jury at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival.^[21] Never a prolific actress, even at the height of her career, Christie turned down many high-profile film roles, including Anne of the Thousand Days, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Reds, all of which earned Oscar nominations for the actresses who eventually played them.^[15][22]

1980s

In the 1980s, Christie appeared in non-mainstream films such as The Return of the Soldier (1982) and Heat and Dust (1983). She had a major supporting role in Sidney Lumet's Power (1986) alongside Richard Gere and Gene Hackman, but apart from that, she avoided large budget films. She starred in the television film Dadah Is Death (1988), based on the Barlow and Chambers execution, as Barlow's mother Barbara, who desperately fought to save her son from being hanged for drug trafficking in Malaysia.^[23]

1990s

After a lengthy absence from the screen, Christie co-starred in the fantasy adventure film Dragonheart (1996), and appeared as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (also 1996). Her next critically acclaimed role was the unhappy wife in Alan Rudolph's domestic comedy-drama Afterglow (1997) with Nick Nolte, Jonny Lee Miller and Lara Flynn Boyle. Christie received a third Oscar nomination for her role. Appearing in six films that were ranked in the British Film Institute's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, in recognition of her contribution to British cinema Christie received BAFTA's highest honour, the Fellowship in 1997.^[24][25] In 1994, she had been awarded the title Doctor of Letters from the University of Warwick.^[26]

21st century

Christie made a brief cameo appearance in the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), playing Madam Rosmerta. Around the same time, she also appeared in two other high-profile films: Wolfgang Petersen's Troy and Marc Forster's Finding Neverland (both 2004), playing mother to Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet, respectively. The latter performance earned Christie a BAFTA nomination as supporting actress in a film.

Christie portrayed the female lead in Away from Her (2006), 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 was the first feature film directed by Christie's sometime co-star, Canadian actress Sarah Polley. She took the role, she says, only because Polley is her friend.^[27] Polley has said Christie liked the 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.^[28]

In July 2006 she was a member of the jury at the 28th Moscow International Film Festival.^[29] Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 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 four Toronto dailies. Critics singled out her performances as well as that of her co-star, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, and Polley's direction. Christie's performance generated Oscar buzz, leading the distributor, Lions Gate Entertainment, to buy the film at the festival to release the film in 2007 to build momentum during the awards season.

On 5 December 2007, she won the Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review for her performance in Away from Her.^[30] She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and the Genie Award for Best Actress for the same film. On 22 January 2008, Christie received her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the 80th Academy Awards. She appeared at the ceremony wearing a pin calling for the closure of the prison in Guantanamo Bay.^[31]

Christie narrated Uncontacted Tribes (2008), a short film for the British-based charity Survival International, featuring previously unseen footage of remote and endangered peoples.^[32] She has been a long-standing supporter of the charity, and in February 2008, was named as its first 'Ambassador'.^[33] She appeared in a segment of the film, New York, I Love You (also 2008), written by Anthony Minghella, directed by Shekhar Kapur and co-starring Shia LaBeouf, as well as in Glorious 39 (2009), about a British family at the start of World War II.

Christie played a "sexy, bohemian" version of the grandmother role in Catherine Hardwicke's gothic retelling of Red Riding Hood (2011).^[34] Her most recent role was in the political thriller The Company You Keep (2012), where she co-starred with Robert Redford and Sam Elliott.

Films

Television

Theatre

Christie made her professional debut in 1957 at the Frinton Repertory Company in Essex.