Early career Christie made her professional stage debut in 1957, and her first screen roles were on British television. 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.
1960s Christie appeared in two comedies for Independent Artists:
Crooks Anonymous and
The Fast Lady (both 1962). The latter was financed by the Rank Organisation, and
Filmink magazine argued Christie was "another in the long, long line of classy female stars given early career breaks by Rank, only for the studio to not know what to do with her." 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. It resulted in her being put under contract by
Nat Cohen. 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. The film was directed by Schlesinger and co-starred
Dirk Bogarde and
Laurence Harvey. Christie was cast in the lead role only after Schlesinger insisted, the studio having wanted
Shirley MacLaine. Christie received the
Academy Award for Best Actress and the
BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role for her performance. '' (1965) In
David Lean's
Doctor Zhivago (also 1965), adapted from the epic/romance novel by
Boris Pasternak, Christie played Lara Antipova, in what has become her best-known role. 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". After dual roles in
François Truffaut's adaptation of
Ray Bradbury's 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). 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".
1970s 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
madam 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". Christie returned to the United Kingdom in 1977, living on a farm in
Wales. In 1979, she was a member of the jury at the
29th Berlin International Film Festival. Never a prolific actress, even at the height of her career, Christie turned down many high-profile film roles, including
Anne of the Thousand Days, ''
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Reds'', all of which earned Oscar nominations for the actresses who eventually played them.
1980s and 1990s In the 1980s, Christie appeared in non-mainstream films such as
The Return of the Soldier (1982) and
Heat and Dust (1983). She had a major supporting role in
Sidney Lumet's
Power (1986) alongside
Richard Gere and
Gene Hackman, but apart from that, she avoided large budget films. She starred in the television film
Dadah Is Death (1988), based on the
Barlow and Chambers execution, as Barlow's mother Barbara, who desperately fought to save her son from being hanged for drug trafficking in Malaysia. After a lengthy absence from the screen, Christie co-starred in the fantasy adventure film
Dragonheart (1996), and appeared as Gertrude in
Kenneth Branagh's
Hamlet (also 1996). Her next critically acclaimed role was the unhappy wife in
Alan Rudolph's domestic comedy-drama
Afterglow (1997) with
Nick Nolte,
Jonny Lee Miller and
Lara Flynn Boyle. Christie received a third Oscar nomination for her role. Appearing in six films that were ranked in the
British Film Institute's
100 greatest British films of the 20th century, in recognition of her contribution to British cinema Christie received
BAFTA's highest honour, the
Fellowship, in 1997. In 1994, she had been awarded the title Doctor of Letters from the University of Warwick.
21st century Christie made a brief cameo appearance in the third
Harry Potter film,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), playing
Madam Rosmerta. Around the same time, she also appeared in two other high-profile films:
Wolfgang Petersen's
Troy and
Marc Forster's
Finding Neverland (both 2004), playing mother to
Brad Pitt and
Kate Winslet, respectively. The latter performance earned Christie a BAFTA nomination as supporting actress in a film. Christie portrayed the female lead in
Away from Her (2006), a film about a long-married Canadian couple coping with the wife's
Alzheimer's disease. Based on the
Alice Munro short story "
The Bear Came Over the Mountain", the movie was the first feature film directed by Christie's sometime co-star, Canadian actress
Sarah Polley. She took the role, she said, only because Polley is her friend. Polley has said Christie liked the script but initially turned it down as she was ambivalent about acting. It took several months of persuasion by Polley before Christie finally accepted the role. In July 2006 she was a member of the jury at the
28th Moscow International Film Festival. Debuting at the
Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2006 as part of the TIFF's Gala showcase,
Away from Her drew rave reviews from the trade press, including
The Hollywood Reporter, and the four Toronto dailies. Critics singled out her performances as well as that of her co-star, Canadian actor
Gordon Pinsent, and
Polley's direction. Christie's performance generated Oscar buzz, leading the distributor,
Lions Gate Entertainment, to buy the film at the festival to release the film in 2007 to build momentum during the awards season. On 5 December 2007, she won the Best Actress Award from the
National Board of Review for her performance in
Away from Her. She won the
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, the
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and the
Genie Award for
Best Actress for the same film. On 22 January 2008, Christie received her fourth
Oscar nomination for
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the
80th Academy Awards. She appeared at the ceremony wearing a pin calling for the closure of the prison in
Guantanamo Bay. Christie narrated
Uncontacted Tribes (2008), a short film for the British-based charity
Survival International, featuring previously unseen footage of remote and endangered peoples. She has been a long-standing supporter of the charity, and in February 2008, was named as its first 'Ambassador'. She appeared in a segment of the film,
New York, I Love You (also 2008), written by
Anthony Minghella, directed by
Shekhar Kapur and co-starring
Shia LaBeouf, as well as in
Glorious 39 (2009), about a British family at the start of
World War II. Christie played a "sexy, bohemian" version of the grandmother role in
Catherine Hardwicke's gothic retelling of
Red Riding Hood (2011). Her most recent role was in the political thriller
The Company You Keep (2012), where she co-starred with
Robert Redford and
Sam Elliott. She is a signatory of the
Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025. == Critical reception ==