JULIE CHRISTIE

Julie Christie was born in Chabua, Assam, India in 1941, where her British family owned a tea plantation. After her father had an illegitimate child with an Indian mistress, her parents separated and she was sent to school in England. She was strikingly beautiful, but she was not a good student and got expelled from the first school she went to, but she discovered acting in school productions. After her schooling, she pursued acting full-time, and in 1961 got a role on TV's A for Andromeda. After a bit part in another movie, she got a major role in The Fast Lady. The following year, she got her big break in John Schlesinger's Billy Liar. It was Schlesinger's Darling two years later that won her the Best Actress Oscar and made her a major star. Many stars who win Oscars follow up with parts in lesser movies they take solely for the money, but not Christie. She followed Darling with excellent performances in four fine movies: Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit 451, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Petulia! She then entered into a long term relationship with Warren Beatty, and she stopped making epic movies, and made just a few art house type movies (including McCabe & Mrs. Miller [nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film] with Beatty in 1971 and Nicholas Roeg's ultra quirky Don't Look Now in 1973). Many people feel she essentially gave up her career for Beatty, which if true is a great shame, for she she would surely have had an amazing body of work had she continued making the quantity and quality of films she did before she met Beatty. In 1974, her long affair with Beatty ended, but they remained great friends and she appeared as his ex-girl friend in Shampoo the following year, and again with him in Heaven Can Wait in 1978. But she had moved to Wales after their breakup, and other than those two movies she only made one other movie between 1973 and 1981. She appeared in a handful of movies in the early 1980s, and then mostly went back into seclusion until the late 1990s, when she again made a handful of movies, including Alan Rudolph's Afterglow (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film) in 1997, where she played a romantic lead (at age 56), looking as beautiful as ever, and Away From Her (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film) in 2006. She continues to make a few film appearances, and she is involved in many causes, and continues to live in Wales, where she married her long time boyfriend in 2007. As of 2021, Julie is still alive at the age of 81!