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

GF: How did you deal with it then?

JC: I basically put myself into directors' hands and let them tell me what to do, and the more they told me what to do the more I liked it.

GF: Which of your early performances did you find enriching?

JC: I don't know if any were. I wouldn't say the same about what I'm doing now - I've changed. It's chalk and cheese. Back then, I really didn't know how to act and - let me say this - I don't think I actually did act, because I wasn't there. What did enrich me were the places I went to make the films, because I feed off external stimuli. Every day on Far From the Madding Crowd [1967] was a huge feast of beauty, because I was in this glorious Dorset countryside. And I had a fantastic time in Venice doing Don't Look Now [1973] - I still have images of beauty and pleasure in my mind from that time. The actual work was on the side. It wasn't something I was actually personally involved in, except in terms of the terror I felt.

GF: The women you played in the '60s and '70s were often frivolous or willful - although Constance Miller in McCabe and Mrs. Miller [1971] was an exception to that. When you left America and moved back to Britain in the late '70s, there was a shift. The films you chose were more political and the women you played tended to be stronger. Do you think that's a fair assessment?

JC: I think that what I did initially was, on the whole, literary and romantic. Even Darling [1965] wasn't as realistic as the kitchen-sink dramas that came before it, although my role in it should have addressed the empowerment of women. From [director] John Schlesinger's point of view, it did. Here was a woman who was going to take her own route. She was doing it through men, but she wasn't going to do it by actually attaching herself in a classical way to a man; she was going to use men. It was a pretty novel image of a woman at the time, coming after the '50s. of course, she got punished at the end. Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd should have been a more empowered woman. It was actually quite an authoritative role - she knew how to get what she wanted - but I don't think I played her right. What else was there? Perhaps the rest weren't empowered. I can't even remember who they were. [musing] No, the woman I played in Billy Liar [1963] was very strong.

GF: But your choices definitely became mom politically aware in the '80s, didn't they? I'm thinking specifically of The Gold Diggers [1983] and Miss Mary [1986].

JC: Yes. I think I'd been on the right track, so to speak, but just wasn't doing anything about it. It takes me time to realize things; I'm a speedy person but a slow thinker. Living in America I became aware of many issues and I went through a period of politicization. There was a little hiatus in the middle when I did things like Shampoo [1975] and Heaven Can Wait [1978], wasn't there? I don't know what those films were about [laughs], and certainly the women I played in them were not very empowered hardly at all.