That same year, she starred in Doctor Zhivago, the eighth highest grossing film of all time after adjustment for inflation. Her late career includes Academy Award-nominated performances in the independent films Afterglow (1997) and Away from Her (2006). She later studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Her big break came in the 1961 BBC serial A for Andromeda. For this performance, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, among numerous other accolades. Her next critically acclaimed role was the unhappy wife in Alan Rudolph’s domestic comedy-drama Afterglow, which gained her a third Oscar nomination. Christie made a brief appearance in the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, playing Madam Rosmerta. It took several months of persuasion by Polley before Christie finally accepted the role, which was written with her in mind.

Donald Sutherland hated Christie sex scene Donald Sutherland had “the worst” time shooting a sex scene with Julie Christie for ‘Don’t Look Now’ because it was uncomfortable and took a long time… [link]

Christie was born on 14 April 1941 in Singlijan Tea Estate, Chabua, Assam, India, then part of the British Empire. She is the eldest of two children of Rosemary (née Ramsden) and Frank St. John Christie. Christie’s parents separated during her childhood. After her parents’ divorce, Christie spent time with her mother in rural Wales.

Schlesinger directed her in her breakthrough role, as the amoral model Diana Scott in Darling, a role which the producers originally offered to Shirley MacLaine. in 1966, the 25-year-old Christie was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role when she played a double role in François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 and won the Academy Award for Best Actress and BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Darling Later, she played Thomas Hardy’s heroine Bathsheba Everdene in Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and the lead character, Petulia Danner, (opposite George C. Scott) in Richard Lester’s Petulia (1968). in the 1970s, Christie starred in smaller films such as Robert Altman’s postmodern western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), with Warren Beatty, where her role as a brothel ‘madam’ gained her a second Best Actress Oscar nomination, The Go-Between (again co-starring Alan Bates, 1971), Don’t Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), Altman’s classic Nashville (also 1975, in an amusing cameo as herself opposite Karen Black and Henry Gibson), Demon Seed (1977), and Heaven Can Wait (1978), again with Beatty. She moved to Hollywood during the decade, where between 1967 and 1974 she had a high-profile but intermittent relationship with Warren Beatty, who described her as “the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person I had ever known.” in 1979, she was a member of the jury at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival. Christie also signed on to play the female lead in American Gigolo opposite Richard Gere, however when Gere dropped out and John Travolta was cast in the role, Christie too dropped out from the project.