Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress.
An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Christie was born on 14 April 1940 at Singlijan Tea Estate, Chabua, Assam, British India, to Rosemary, a Welsh-born painter and Frank, who ran the tea plantation where she grew up.
She has a younger brother, Clive, and an older (deceased) half-sister, June, from her father's relationship with an Indian tea picker on his plantation.
At the age of six she was sent to live with a foster mother so she could attend a convent school in England.
Her parents separated when Julie was a child, and after their divorce, she spent time with her mother in rural Wales.
She was baptised in the Church of England, and studied as a boarder at the independent Convent of Our Lady school in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, after being expelled from another convent school for telling a risqué joke that reached a wider audience than she had anticipated.
After being asked to leave the Convent of Our Lady as well, she attended the all-girls Wycombe Court School, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, during which time she lived with a foster mother from the age of six.
At the Wycombe school, she played the Dauphin in a production of Shaw's Saint Joan. She went to Paris to finish schooling and learn French.
She later returned to England and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
1957
Christie made her professional stage debut in 1957, and her first screen roles were on British television.
1961
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.
1962
Christie appeared in two comedies for Independent Artists: Crooks Anonymous and The Fast Lady (both 1962).
1963
Christie's breakthrough film role was in Billy Liar (1963).
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.
1965
She came to international attention for her performances in Darling (1965), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Doctor Zhivago (also 1965), the eighth highest-grossing film of all time after adjustment for inflation.
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.
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.
She received the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role for her performance.
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.
, Doctor Zhivago is the 8th highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation.
According to Life magazine, 1965 was "The Year of Julie Christie".
1966
In the following years, Christie starred in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), The Go-Between (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
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).
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.
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".
The couple had a high-profile but intermittent relationship between 1967 and 1974.
1971
She continued to receive Academy Award nominations, for McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Afterglow (1997) and Away from Her (2007).
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 madame 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".
1975
After the relationship ended, they worked together again in the comedies Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
1996
She is also known for her performances in Hamlet (1996), and Finding Neverland (2004), Troy and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (both 2004).
1997
She has appeared in six films ranked in the British Film Institute's BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century, and in 1997, she received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
