Christie, Julie

▪ British actress

born April 14, 1941, Chukua, Assam, India

      British film actress renowned for a wide range of roles in English and American films of the 1960s and '70s, as well as for her strikingly attractive looks and offbeat, free-spirited personality.

      Christie was born on her father's Indian tea plantation but was educated in England and France. She studied acting at London's Central School for Drama and made her stage debut in 1957. Her first major film role was in director John Schlesinger (Schlesinger, John)'s Billy Liar (1963). In 1965 she found stardom and won an Academy Award for playing a self-destructive fashion model in Schlesinger's Darling. That same year, she also appeared as the romantic heroine Lara in David Lean (Lean, Sir David)'s enormously successful screen adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. She played dual roles in director François Truffaut (Truffaut, François)'s production of Ray Bradbury's science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and portrayed the Thomas Hardy heroine Bathsheba in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), her final theatrical film with Schlesinger.

      At the peak of her popularity, Christie made it a point to resist easy money and to be leery of fame. Often shunning the lure of mediocre Hollywood projects, the actress opted instead to play interesting roles in a series of films by respected international directors such as Lean, Truffaut, Richard Lester, Robert Altman (Altman, Robert), and Nicolas Roeg. Christie was comfortable in both contemporary and period pieces; in Lester's Petulia (1968), she gave the defining performance of a 1960s free spirit, and in Altman's period western McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), she won another Oscar nomination for her portrait of a tough, unflappable madam. In Roeg's disturbing psychological thriller, Don't Look Now (1973)—a film that has become something of a cult classic—Christie turned in what was perhaps her most emotionally layered performance to date as a woman haunted by the deaths of her daughter and husband yet determined to maintain her poise and dignity.

      Her romance with American actor, producer, and director Warren Beatty (Beatty, Warren) resulted in three noteworthy films: McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). Christie appeared only sporadically in films during the 1980s, finding few compelling roles for an actress in her 40s. A notable exception was her performance in the 1983 made-for-television adaptation of Terence Rattigan (Rattigan, Sir Terence)'s play Separate Tables.

      In the 1990s, Christie returned to the filmgoing public's attention with her acclaimed portrayal of Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996). She received her third Academy Award nomination for her role as a world-weary retired screen actress in Afterglow (1997). Her later films include Troy (2004), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and Finding Neverland (2004). Christie received a best actress Oscar nomination for her role as a woman with Alzheimer disease who forgets about her husband and falls in love with another man in Away from Her (2006), based on the short story by Alice Munro (Munro, Alice).

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