Apr 14, 1941

Chabua, Assam, India

Julie Christie, the British movie legend whom Al Pacino called "the most poetic of all actresses," was born in Chukua, Assam, India, on April 14, 1941, the daughter of a tea planter and his Welsh wife Rosemary, who was a painter. The young Christie grew up on her father's tea plantation before being sent to England for her education. Finishing her studies in Paris, where she had moved to improve her French with an eye to possibly becoming a linguist (she is fluent in French and Italian), the tee... ... (read more...) nager became enamored of the freedom of the Continent. She also was smitten by the bohemian life of artists and planned on becoming an artist before she enrolled in London's Central School of Speech Training. She made her debut as a professional in 1957 as a member of the Frinton Repertory of Essex. Christie was not fond of the stage, even though it allowed her to travel, including a professional gig in the United States. Her true métier as an actress was film, and she made her debut in the science-fiction television series "A for Andromeda" (1961), Her first film was a bit part in the Ealing-like comedy Crooks Anonymous (1962), which was followed up by a larger ingénue role in another comedy, The Fast Lady (1962).

The producers of the James Bond series were sufficiently intrigued by the young actress to consider her for the role that subsequently went to Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962), but dropped the idea because she was not busty enough. Christie first worked with the man who would kick her career into high gear, director John Schlesinger, when he choose her as a replacement for the actress originally cast in Billy Liar (1963). Christie's turn in the film as the free-wheeling Liz was a stunner, and she had her first taste of becoming a symbol if not icon of the new British cinema. Her screen presence was such that the great John Ford cast her as the young prostitute in Young Cassidy (1965). Charlton Heston wanted her for his film "The War Lord" (1965), but the studio refused her salary demands. Although Amercan magazines portrayed Christie as a "newcomer" when she made her breakthrough to super-stardom in Schlesinger's seminal Swinging Sixties film Darling (1965), she actually had considerable work under her professional belt and was in the process of a artistic quickening. Playing Diana Scott, an amoral social butterfly who undergoes a metamorphosis from immature sex kitten to jaded socialite, Christie won raves, including the Best Actress Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Academy. She had arrived, especially as she had followed up Darling with the role of Lara in David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (1965), one of the all-time box-office champs. Christie was now a superstar who commanded a price of $400,000 per picture, a fact ruefully noted in Charlton Heston 's diary (his studio had balked at paying her then-fee of $35,000). More interested in film as an art form than in consolidating her movie stardom, Christie followed up "Zhivago" with a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) for director 'Francois Truffaut' , a director she admired.