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Julie Christie… a sort of fabrication - actress - part 2 - Interview
Interview, March, 1997 by Graham Fuller
GF: Did you ever see your ayah again?
JC: No. I went back to see her, but she died just before I got there. She had very loving children.
GF: Do you regret not having kids yourself?
JC: No. [pauses] Let me just think seriously about your question. Hold on. I've got to track down the box of truth. . . . See, the thing is, I don't regret it because I don't think I would have been a good mother. Being a parent brings immense responsibility. It's a Herculean task to bring up someone who's going to be well-adjusted and valuable to society nowadays. I think it would be almost too much for me. I don't think I'm up to the baffle against the status quo and against the media, which is doing everything it can to fry children's brains and make them grow up maladjusted. I have a lot of admiration for single women who throw themselves up against that juggernaut.
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GF: Do you regret not marrying?
JC: [laughs] Certainly not. I've never quite understood why people do it. Marriage is just an invented structure that seems to have little to do with anything. GF: Would you describe yourself as happy?
JC: I was just reading a book called Slowness by Milan Kundera. In it he says - and this makes me sound terribly affected - that happiness is the absence of suffering. I'm not saying that's what I think happiness means, but I think it's an interesting way of looking at it. I think the absence of suffering exists very rarely in the world we live in. I'd say that I certainly feel a joy in being alive that is sometimes quite overwhelming, but then I feel terrible grief at the same time.
GF: Let me put it another way. Do you have peace of mind?
JC: No. I never will have peace of mind. I'm not constructed that way. Some things in life can be horrible. But I still love life - and living.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
