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Julie Christie… a sort of fabrication - actress - part 2 - Interview

Interview, March, 1997 by Graham Fuller

I see stardom very clearly as a construct that's been created in order to sell things. The more I meet other actors, the less the idea of the mythical movie star - an imaginary desire object who conforms to a certain ideal - makes sense to me at all. I think if people realize this when they read interviews, they might be less avid about them. It's sad that they get fooled into buying magazines and seeing films when so much of it is . . .

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GF: When we were setting up this interview, you called me yourself, and you took the trouble to find us an interesting place to meet and look at some art together, and that's how we've ended up here at the Cloisters museum [in New York City]. In the guarded world of American film publicity, it's highly unusual for an interviewee to make direct contact with the interviewer before the allotted hour, and rare for the interview to take place outside a controlled environment like a hotel room. I'm grateful. Apart from establishing a basic human contact between us, it removed the aura of celebrity around you. Ninety-nine percent of interviews are fake experiences because of that protective shell.

JC: I'm really interested in the business of deconstructing and demythologizing, because we live in a world of absolute lies. From beginning to end, almost everything we're surrounded by is a lie, and it interests me intellectually to get down to what is nearer the truth by chucking away a lot of the garbage and seeing what it is we're actually dealing with. I think it's sad that so often people think, when they read an interview, that in some way they're going to be touched by that person. They don't realize that the person, on the whole, is doing it because they're trying to sell something as if it were floor polish. I better be careful what I say, because fight now I'm promoting Hamlet. [laughs]

GF: I wouldn't describe Hamlet as floor polish, although the set dressers probably used a lot of it in that huge Elsinore palace.

JC: [laughs] Yes, they probably did. I'm not actually in the advertising business, but I happen to think that it would be very nice if people went to see the film because it was made with love and integrity, and because Kenneth [Branagh], director of Hamlet] inspires great loyalty. That's why I'm doing an interview. I'm not doing it for any other reason, or so that anybody can get a bit of me.

GF: Why are you so wary of publicity?

JC: I think it's to do with taste. Early on, I found the attention - all that stuff written about me, all those pictures - completely embarrassing. I'd cringe if I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine staring out at people who didn't know me. And if I saw someone reading about me in a magazine it would be the most horrible experience, because I knew they'd be reading a fantasy about me that would be far removed from anything to do with me. I suppose it's the way I was brought up. Discretion and straightforwardness are important to me, as is the need to locate the truth in what one does and sees and reads about - and [being regarded as a celebrity] seems to be the exact opposite of that. That's what I mean by taste - or character. Now, some people enjoy celebrity and I admire those who do, because if you're going to go through it, you might as well enjoy it. I regret the fact that I wasn't the kind of person who could enjoy it. I simply couldn't - it embarrassed me too much. There's good and bad in that.

GF: Why do you think you wanted to act in the first place?

JC: I have absolutely no memory, so I have no idea. That might be the clue to everything. My mother - my family is all dead now except for my brother - said that I wanted to act even when I was a child living on a tea plantation in the jungle in India. I don't know whether I believed her because I only lived in India until about the age of six, and we obviously had nothing like television. Other people who knew me have said I was absolutely determined to be an actress. I think maybe I was born with a need to be the center of attention, and, of course, you're the center of the world when you're acting. But at boarding school in England I got punished in the most humiliating ways for so-called showing off, and I think I then turned into an introvert. That's another reason why it's quite hard for me being an actress because I actually don't like attention, whereas I think as a child I did.

GF: Did you take acting seriously when you began making films?

JC: Oh, no. I'd say I have only just started to approach being a serious actress. First of all, I couldn't quite grasp the reality that I was in some way being singled out and given these jobs. I thought I was just going to be a stage actress and do rep and then get better and better. The idea of stardom never occurred to me; it just didn't concur with who I was. In retrospect, I can see why it happened. I think it had to do with my looks - I think I've got something when I'm onscreen - but that's nothing to do with acting or talent, and I think it created an unreality for me. I just didn't believe it. Also, I didn't think I could act, and I didn't know how to work on it.

Julie Christie… a sort of fabrication - actress - part 2 - Interview

Interview, March, 1997 by Graham Fuller

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