Home> Facts and Trivia > Stars > Julie Christie
Julie Christie Facts
| Sign | Aries |
| Born |
Apr 14, 1941 Chabua, India |
| Age | 85 |
| Total Facts | 57 |
Robert Altman said of her, "She's my incandescent, melancholy, strong, gold-hearted, sphinx-like, stainless steel little soldier".
Al Pacino's favorite actress.
Accompanied her long-time lover Warren Beatty on a trip to Russia which inspired him to write his Oscar-winning epic Reds (1981) which ultimately took him 13 years to write. Beatty had always planned to have Christie play the role of Louise Bryant, but when Reds (1981) began filming several years after the couple's breakup, Christie turned down the role and Beatty gave it to Diane Keaton. However, Beatty dedicated the film to Christie by hinting to her in his best director Oscar acceptance speech. "For Jules" can also be seen in the final credits of the film.
Became very close with director Robert Altman while filming McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). (Ironically, her lover and co-star Warren Beatty did not get along with Altman, primarily due to his use of overlapping dialog.) She later appeared as herself in Altman's 1975 classic Nashville (1975) and received an Oscar nomination starring in the Altman-produced Afterglow (1997), directed by Altman protégé Alan Rudolph. The two remained very close until Altman's death in 2006.
Born at 10:00am-LMT.
Brother Clive Christie is a professor of SouthEast Asian studies at Hull University.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars (#91).
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#26). [1995]
Close friends with actress Goldie Hawn. The two women were introduced by Warren Beatty in the late 1960s. Beatty and Christie came to consider Goldie as family, and she co-starred with them in Shampoo (1975). Hawn also introduced Christie to yoga, which she still practices today.
Close friends with actresses Shirley MacLaine, Goldie Hawn, and Catherine Deneuve.
Director David Lean nicknamed her 'sunflower' for her beautiful personality and director John Schlesinger nicknamed her 'Trilby' after the 19th century novel about a lovable bohemian.
Directors she works with often enjoy working with her so much that they use her several times, Robert Altman in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975); John Schlesinger in Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and Separate Tables (1983) (TV); Nicolas Roeg directed her in Don't Look Now (1973) and was cinematographer on Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Petulia (1968) and lover Warren Beatty used her in Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
Favorite filmmaker is Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Fluent in English, French, and Italian.
Former co-owner of Katira Productions, along with boyfriend Warren Beatty (named after Beatty's parents Kathlyn and Ira).
Friends with actresses Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson.
Future long-term lover Warren Beatty first espied Christie at the 1967 Royal Command Performance of the film Born Free (1966) in London, which he attended with his then-girlfriend, Leslie Caron. Caron and Beatty were situated near Chrstie in the reception line for Queen Elizabeth II, and Beatty first saw Christie in person when he turned to watch the Queen shake hands with her. Beatty inveigled his friend Richard Sylbert, who was production designer on Christie's film Petulia (1968), to tell her to call him. She did, he flew up to the San Francisco location of the Petulia (1968) shoot and, after a rocky start, they became lovers. She made her first public appearance with Beatty at a sneak preview of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) for the Hollywood elite. It took them several months to rid themselves of their then-current lovers before they came together in a committed relationship, although they usually maintained separate households for the length of their long romance. Most of those w
Great admirer of Princess Diana of Wales and was extremely affected by her 1997 death.
Has played the mother of two Defense Against the Dark Arts professors from the "Harry Potter" series. In Hamlet (1996), she plays the mother of Kenneth Branagh, who went on to play "Gilderoy Lockhart". In DragonHeart (1996), she plays mother to David Thewlis, who plays "Remus Lupin". Christie herself also appears in the third film, with Thewlis.
Has worked with director-screenwriter and actress Sarah Polley three times: co-starring with Polley in No Such Thing (2001) and the Goya Award-winning "La Vida secreta de las palabras" (aka The Secret Life of Words (2005)), and taking the lead in Polley's first feature film as a director, Away from Her (2006). Polley is one of the many co-workers impressed by not only Christie's talent, but her intelligence and independence. After appearing with her in No Such Thing (2001), Polley -- who lost her mom when she was 11 years old -- said that Julie had become one of her surrogate mothers.
Her idol is Marlon Brando.
Her mentor, director John Schlesinger, envisioned a cast of Al Pacino, Julie Christie and Laurence Olivier for Marathon Man (1976). Pacino has said that the only actress he had ever wanted to work with was Christie, who he claimed was "the most poetic of actresses." Producer Robert Evans, who disparaged the vertically challenged Pacino as "The Midget" when Francis Ford Coppola wanted him for The Godfather (1972) and had thought of firing him during the early shooting of the now-classic film, vetoed Pacino for the lead, insisted on the casting of the even-shorter Dustin Hoffman instead! On her part, Christie -- who was notoriously finicky about accepting parts, even in prestigious, sure-fire material -- turned down the female lead, which was then taken by Marthe Keller (who, ironically, became Pacino's lover after co-starring with him in Bobby Deerfield (1977). Of his dream cast, Schlesinger only got Olivier, who wa
Her mother Rosemary, a Welsh painter, was a childhood friend of Richard Burton.
Her performance as Diana Scott in Darling (1965) is ranked #75 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
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".
In an April 29, 1966 Life Magazine cover story, Christie named Sidney Lumet as the only American among a list of directors she'd like to work with. Twenty years later, she got her wish, appearing in the Lumet-directed Power (1986).
Inspired the song "Julie Christie" on the Better Than Chocolate (1999) soundtrack.
Is currently active in nuclear disarmament and animal rights.
Julie gave friend Sharon Tate a copy of Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" with the inscription "For my Hardy heroine" (Julie had recently become a Thomas Hardy heroine in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)). Sharon gave the novel to her husband Roman Polanski shortly before her death. When Polanski later made the film Tess (1979) he dedicated it "For Sharon".
Julie's father ran a tea plantation in Assam, India, where she grew up.
Lived with Warren Beatty from 1967 to 1974.
Measurements: 35B-23-36 (in 1966, age 25) (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine).
Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1979.
One of her first roles was playing young Anne Frank in a London theatrical production of "The Diary of Anne Frank".
Originally signed for the role of the Senator's wife in American Gigolo (1980) when Richard Gere was signed to the project, but quit when Gere was ditched in favor of John Travolta. Travolta later dropped out and Gere was hired for the film, but Christie was not offered the role that was eventually played by Lauren Hutton. Ironically, a rumor in the 1970s held that Christie and Hutton were lovers. Christie and Gere would eventually appear together in Sidney Lumet's Power (1986).
Producer Joseph Janni, who produced four of Christie's earliest pictures (Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and In Search of Gregory (1969)) and generally is credited, along with director John Schlesinger, in launching her career, created a complex tax shelter for Christie to insulate her earnings from the prohibitively high British tax rate during the 1960s. When the UK Inland Revenue finally investigated the tax shelter many years later, Inland Revenue officials declared it was one of the most complicated tax-avoidance scheme it had come across. Christie herself was cleared of any wrong-doing.
Ranked #29 in Mr.Skin's Top 100 Celebrity Nude Scenes.
Ranked #34 in Celebrity Skin's 50 Sexiest Starlets of All Time.
Ranked #5 in Hello Magazine's 25 British Beauties.
Ranked #9 in FHM magazine's '100 sexiest women of all time'.
Said to have been the inspiration for the character "Julie Baker" in 'Francois Truffaut''s Day for Night (1973).
She discovered she wanted to become an actress when, at the age of nine, she snuck out of her Paris boarding school and spent the day with a complete stranger who was an aspiring actor.
She is a fan of actress Meryl Streep.
She lived with investigative journalist Duncan Campbell from 1979 before their wedding in January 2008.
She reluctantly agreed to star in writer-director Sarah Polley's debut feature-film Away from Her (2006) after many months of persuasion. Christie, who had acted previously with Polley, liked her script, but -- like Polley -- is ambivalent about her acting career. She finally capitulated and her brilliant performance in the film, which debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and is due to be released in the United States in the Spring of 2007, has generated buzz predicting that the film likely will bring Christie her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination.
The infamous dinner-party scene in Shampoo (1975) was completely improvised by Julie and Warren Beatty, much to the surprise of the rest of the cast and director Hal Ashby.
The off-screen romance of Terence Stamp and Christie while they were filming Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) has been said to have inspired The Kinks' hit, "Waterloo Sunset", hence the line "Terry met Julie" in the song but Ray Davies of The Kinks who penned the song, in a 2004 interview, denied this, saying: "No, Terry and Julie were real people. I couldn't write for stars." Stamp later turned down the role of Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) due to his complicated emotions over co-starring with Christie, backing out of the role on the pretext of Julie receiving top billing. Oskar Werner subsequently played Montag.
Turned down roles in Two for the Road (1967), Valley of the Dolls (1967), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), American Gigolo (1980), and a re-make of the Greta Garbo classic Camille (1936).
Turned down the leads in The Collector (1965), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Reds (1981), all roles that won the actresses who eventually played them Best Actress Academy Award nominations.
Turned down the role of Lara in Doctor Zhivago (1965) at the time the most coveted role in Hollywood, several times before finally accepting.