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

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 . . .

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.

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.

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]

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.

GF: Did you leave America because you were disillusioned with Hollywood?

JC: No. To be honest, most of the time I spent in America I was having a love affair with some American or other. I was just passing through but I stayed because of these chaps. So when one relationship was breaking up very unhappily, and there didn't seem to be another one around the corner, I went back to England. I'd never been content in America.

GF: Did you experience culture shock back in Britain?

JC: It was a terrific shock. I wrote reams of pages about it. Having lived in Beverly Hills, I was very grateful to come home and see old women looking like old women, with little coats on and shopping bags, instead of being made-up, jeweled, and label-dressed. Mind you, as I say it, I know I'm probably not going to let my hair go gray and walk around with a shopping trolley. [laughs]

GF: I can't imagine it.

JC: And this is funny - I started noticing how stained the pavements are in London. The pavements in Beverly Hills aren't used; in London, they're used for everything. It doesn't matter how much they're cleaned, they still reflect light. They're not dirty, just stained. I was also surprised to see people in England wearing clothes that didn't look as if they'd just come from the dry cleaners but looked as if they might have been worn for more than one day. And I was pleased that we still had shops instead of supermarkets. What I'm saying is, I just loved being back. A big part of that was - I don't know if it's still true - that in England at that time you could get reasonably fair news coverage of, for instance, the situation in Israel, which you just couldn't get in America, where the Palestinians were demonized and you'd just get the Israeli point of view. There was a consciousness of what was going on in the world, and I realized that I'd been living in a vacuum in America. So that's the kind of culture shock I got. Of course, everybody I knew lived much more simply then, and there didn't seem to be such a huge gap between rich and poor, which there is now, since Thatcher.

GF: When you did Heat and Dust [1983], it took you back to India, where, of course, you were born. Did that resonate with you?

JC: I haven't got a memory, so there was very little resonance. I can only say I was instantly familiar with it. Despite all the problems we endured, I loved it.

GF: Why do you think you blot out so much?

JC: I have no idea. I'd like to find out. I think maybe one of the reasons - and this is totally simplistic - is that my parents sent me away from India to [school in] England when I was six years old. Suddenly, there were no servants, it was cold, I couldn't walk around barefoot. The little things that made up the fabric of the first six years of my life were suddenly ripped away, and, of course, I didn't have anyone around me who loved me. Not one single person. And the people who did love me and whom I relied on were absent, including my ayah - my Indian nanny. The English in India used to hire tribal girls as nannies and they would bond very deeply with their little white charges. My ayah's daughters - my sisters - have told me that when I was sent to England, it was extremely agonizing for both her and me. So I think that could explain why I have so few memories. Children can only take so much and they deal with it however they can.

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.

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.

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