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Julie Christie… a sort of fabrication - actress - part 2 - Interview
Interview, March, 1997 by Graham Fuller
Then, when I came back to Britain, I realized that I was no longer a very young woman - and one knows all about that in the movie business. So I was conscious that I really had to [long pause] attempt to meet my new consciousness, my new age, with roles that reflected it somewhat. The first thing I did when I came back was Memoirs of a Survivor [1981], which, whatever one thinks of it, was certainly a film with a political message, with weight, and I was very aware of that. It was also the first time I was in a film where another actress [Leonie Mellinger] played the young beauty. [laughs]
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As I became very defined in my personal politics, I turned down some films that I slightly regret now; I'm not going to say what they were. Perhaps when you get that defined, you tend not to see the wood for the trees. It's an important phase to go through, but I can see that there were some films I refused because the feminist aspect was a bit wonky. It might have been nice to have done them because they had something else to say. I think I was probably being too nitpicky. But that's how I was. I couldn't have been otherwise, and I was perfectly happy to be like that.***** GF: Tell me more about your politicization.
JC: I really wish I could remember it, but I can't. I can remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It suddenly became absolutely glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men. I also realized that I'd been party to that in my youth. I once had a friend whom I liked because I actually thought she was as intelligent as a man, and that's how far it penetrated my consciousness. So I had a lot of learning to do in terms of finding out and defining my perspective. I threw away a lot of received ideas. But it all took time.
The '70s was quite a lost time for me, so I spent a lot of time looking for different things. I looked at different religious or spiritual leaders. I also read a lot of books with a Buddhist background, and that's what took me into the world of ecology - specifically, the idea that every single thing is related to everything else and that everything anybody does has an effect on the world. Then, when I came back to Britain, it was as if the shades had fallen from my eyes. I began to see the world in a way that I hadn't seen it before. I realized that if I was going to speak publicly as an actor - which you have to do sometimes, no matter how much you want to avoid it - then I had a responsibility to talk not only about myself, but about things that I believed were being lied about and that I had an opportunity, unlike most people, to give my version of.
GF: Were you actively Involved In protesting the Vietnam War?
JC: I don't think I did anything specific, beyond going to demonstrations with thousands of other people. I was certainly at Grosvenor Square [antiwar demonstration outside the American Embassy in London, November 1969] because I can remember how terrifying it was. But I was never very vocal.
