Film Festival offers evening with Julie Christie

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

For an actress who does not and has not ever seen herself as an actress, Julie Christie is one hell of an actress.
Over a span of four decades, Christie, who talked about her movie career last night during a Santa Barbara International Film Festival event at the Lobero Theatre, has been nominated for four Academy Awards, won one and could be on her way to winning another.


But all that aside, Christie, who showed a glimmer of her classical ways when she requested a hand-held microphone over the high-tech wire strung up her back, said repeatedly she never set out for a “career” in film or pictures herself as an actress.
“I don’t think I saw myself as an actress. I still don’t,” she told a nearly capacity crowd that gave Christie a raucous standing ovation when she walked on stage.
So last night, the 66-year-old actress was out of luck, because the topic did not waver far from her indisputably successful career. And despite her reluctance about how she sees her role in film, it was apparent, through her words and snippets that were shown of her performances, that she loves film.
“I loved film,” Christie told the film critic Leonard Maltin, who moderated the event. “I don’t know that I ever had interest in a career, I certainly had an interest in making interesting films.”
When asked by Maltin about her early roles in films like “Darling,” which she won an Oscar for best actress in a leading role in 1966, and the historical movements of that time, Christie spoke about how all of life, not limiting the discussion to film, was wonderful.
“I think when you’re young it’s always an exciting time,” she said. “I think I was very lucky to have been born when I was.”
In a clip shown of “Darling,” Christie could be seen manipulating a man. She said the role, at the time, was closest to who she was in real life. Of all the characters she has played, she said the one furthest from her real self his her most recent performance in “Away from Her,” which she has been nominated for an Oscar for best performance by an actress in a leading role.
Maltin asked if it was ever difficult for Christie to play a role she couldn’t relate with, to which she answered that it’s not right to judge anyone, even a fictional character.
“I think you can’t judge your characters,” Christie said. “That’s the most important thing which is part of the reason why we’re taught not to judge people.”
While it’s no mystery to many that Christie maintains a quiet life outside the flash and glam of Hollywood, she told Maltin that being recognized for doing a good job is a perk.
“It’s always nice to be thought well of,” she said. “That’s always nice. It’s kind of like a bonus in life.”
When asked about what she remembered of her first Academy Award ceremony, Christie told a story about a post card she wrote to her mother.
Christie said she remembers asking her mother on the card if she watched the show, and then wrote, “Wasn’t it jolly good fun?”
After her success in “Darling” in the mid 60s, the only decade since that Christie was not nominated for an Oscar was the 80s.
Maltin probed possible reasons for this, asking whether or not it had to do with her feminist ideologies or if it had to do with living in the U.S.
He was right on both fronts.
“Being in America for so long had put me off from making films,” Christie said, noting that while she was in the states she looked at many films but turned them down because she believed another woman could do an equally good job.
In the case of feminism, and the prevailing way women were, and in many cases still are still treated, Christie wasn’t shy, saying she turned down a number of films based on their portrayal of women.
The one example Christie shared was when she was offered a role as a war correspondent in South America. Noting that she liked the character, her only hang up was that the character constantly phoned her husband.
“I found this degrading to the women I know who were war correspondents,” Christie said. “I was so angry that I didn’t [take the role].”
Through it all, whether Christie is an actress or made a career of it, or not, the one thing that was clear after last night was the high esteem that the crowd and Film Festival Executive Roger Durling has for her.
“I’m pretty flabbergasted that we have the amazing Julie Christie her with us,” Durling said. “She is vibrant, immediate and she is the film god’s gift to us.”