Celebrity Biographies
Julie christie
Queen of the screen in the 60s, she triumphed due to her strong personality, her independent character and an image that was unusual to that of the typical star. In her public appearances, Julie Christie tends to dress informally without makeup, she does not mince words when it comes to making controversial statements and she is never seduced by the exorbitant figures that producers offer her, if she is not interested in the character of the movie. But above all, she transmits great energy when it comes to embodying the woman of a new era on the screen.
And although she lives withdrawn on a Welsh farm “far from the madding crowd”, she returns from time to time, to play small roles that give blockbusters a touch of prestige and quality, such as Troy , where she was the mother of Brad “Achilles” Pitt, and above all, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , where she dazzled the public with her brief appearance as Madame Rosmerta, owner of the ‘The Three Broomsticks’ tavern.
Born on the tea plantation of her parents, a British couple living in India, Julie Frances Christie first saw the world on April 14, 1941, in Chukua, Assam province. Soon the family returned to England. Young Julie was a rebellious girl who was kicked out of the nuns’ school for telling rude things to a classmate of hers. Due to this unfortunate episode, her parents decided to send her to France, to stay with some friends, to see the world. The actress was dazzled by the intellectual level of her family that welcomed her, and she discovered her culture, but she was also hopelessly seduced by her frivolous way of life. “I found myself living in the wonderful world of a large family, very sophisticated in their concepts of life… I, who was used to the stretch of English life, At first I felt very miserable, I missed my home. But then everything began to change”, recalls the actress about that stage of her life, so crucial that at that time she adopted the motto that she has followed to the letter throughout her life: “Do what you want, when you want, have fun don’t care about anything.”
Despite this hedonistic image, the truth is that Julie Christie worked hard to become an actress. She first managed to enter the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London, and then the Brighton School of Art, institutions where the level was high. Afterwards, she worked tirelessly on various stage productions. She would make him famous on the small screen, after being chosen to star in the series A for Andromeda , where she was a kind of attractive female Frankenstein monster, created by some scientists.
Although she made her film debut with the comedy Thieves Anonymous , she established herself as a friend of the protagonist of Billy the Liar , about a guy who lived in an invented world, in a plot very similar to that of the recent Big Fish . This tape would pair Christie for the first time with director John Schlesinger , who would recover her in Darling , a sharp critic of British high society. With this title, Christie won the Oscar for best actress for her role as a model married to an aristocrat who finds no meaning in her life. Around that time she played a small role in The Wayward Dreamer , which John Fordhe was unable to finish due to illness, so he was replaced by Jack Cardiff . But the film that would elevate Julie Christie to the category of celluloid myth was Doctor Zhivago , where she played Lara, a nurse who during the Russian Revolution had an extramarital relationship with Yuri, a doctor and poet, who one cannot remember without being told I jumped a few tears (especially for the theme of Lara, from the sensational soundtrack by Maurice Jarre ). Immediately after, he played a double role in Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 , and returned to work under Schlesinger in Far From the Madding Crowd .
In the 1970s, he continued to be at the top, due to the quality of films such as Joseph Losey ‘s The Messenger , and his three collaborations with his Warren Beatty , Los vividores , Shampoo and Heaven can wait . Apart from maintaining a well-known idyll with Beatty, they were three of the greatest successes of the moment. Next, she focused more on the theater, and to the cinema she returns exceptionally, on memorable occasions, like East and West , from James Ivory , where she was a woman investigating the life of her great-aunt. For her role as the wife of plumber Nick Nolte , in Afterglow, she was again nominated for an Oscar for best actress, in 1997. Her secondary roles stand out, such as the queen of Dragonheart , and especially another queen, Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet in the version of Kenneth Branagh . Her last job so far has been the role of mother to Kate Winslet , in Finding Neverland .