Julie Christie: British actress whose trim, blond beauty and forthright acting style was right in step with the mod 1960s. Stage-trained at London's Central School of Music and Drama, Christie worked in repertory theater in the late 1950s and early 1960s, polishing her technique before making her tyro screen appearance in 1962's Crooks Anonymous. She earned the attention of critics and public alike as the girlfriend of Billy Liar (1963), then won a Best Actress Oscar as the free-thinking social climber in Darling (1965, a role written with her in mind). That same year, she played Lara in Doctor Zhivago and Sean O'Casey's lover in Young Cassidy. After starring in a pair of lavish literary adaptations, Fahrenheit 451 (1967) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Christie came to America to play the unhinged title character in Petulia (1968). She made a pair of arty dramas, In Search of Gregory (1970) and The Go-Between (1971), in England before returning to the States to costar with Warren Beatty in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971, for which she was Oscar-nominated); they began a lengthy affair that encompassed several years, reams of publicity, and two more films: the satiric Shampoo (1975) and the comic fantasy Heaven Can Wait (1978).
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