Fact File
Name: Julie Christie
Born: India
Homes: Wales and London
Age: 57
Occupation: actress
Why in the news: about to make big screen comeback with After- glow, the movie which this week won her an Oscar nomination
When time had crept up on her, when she noticed her famous good looks beginning to wane, Julie Christie felt obliged to learn a little bit about this thing of which she says she knew nothing: acting. So that's what Julie did.
The result was a number of carefully selected projects that culminated in Afterglow, for which she received an Oscar nomination this week.
An unforgettable face which will forever be associated with Sixties London, she featured in films that defined the era and made her an icon of the time. And by rights that is what she should have stayed.
Swinging Sixties starlets should remain trapped in that lava-lamp-littered time capsule, destined only to be wheeled out for appraisal every time fashion gurus decide that London is trendy again.
They do not, by their nature, develop their craft. Christie has acknowledged this, saying that her own development was arrested by securing fantastic parts in mould-breaking movies very early on.
Suddenly she was too famous to do acting workshops. "I just closed my eyes and hoped it was all right," she said.
It was far better than all right. In Billy Liar, Darling, Doctor Zhivago, The Go-Between she played her heart out in romantic roles that made men fall in love with her and women want to be her.
She won an Oscar, had wild times in California, spurned glamour and gossip for a cottage in Wales. She became attached to numerous political causes. She made jam.
In rare interviews the reluctant icon continues to protest that "there are lots of things I like doing better than making films, reading, researching, watching films, going for long walks . . ."
So she was, and remains, a beautiful bundle of contradictions. And as she has said when talking about her efforts to decipher great works of art and poetry, even beautiful things need unravelling sometimes.
Unravelling Christie is difficult because the media-shy actress has made it so clear that she simply doesn't want to be unpacked. Born on a tea plantation in Assam, India, on April 14th, 1940, she was educated in England. The young Julie had hopes of becoming either an artist or a linguist, but enrolled in the Central School of Speech Training instead.
Her first professional acting performance came when she was just 16, with the Frinton Repertory of Essex. Fluffy movie roles in British comedies such as Crooks Anonymous and The Fast Lady followed. She first became loved by the British public for her role in the popular TV series A for Andromeda.
Then came Billy Liar. For the 21-year-old Christie, who was then "living in a house with masses of other people," the role was a godsend. "I was so grateful. Very, very grateful," she has said.
Two years later John Schlesinger, with whom she had worked on Billy Liar, chose her for the lead in a movie about a Mod sexual butterfly. Darling won her an Oscar and, more importantly, box-office pulling power. Doctor Zhivago followed. A star was born.
In 1971 Christie moved to Hollywood where she became romantically involved with a number of Americans, most famously Warren Beatty.
The films that resulted from her professional liaison with the star - McCabe and Mrs Miller, Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait - were critically acclaimed. But much of the 1970s and 1980s saw Christie in movies that lived up to neither her talent nor her desire to be selective about her roles.
But she had moved on by then. Galvanised by her time in America she began to explore politics. She became the champion of every cause imaginable.
She starred as a Protestant Englishwoman in Pat O'Connor's Fools of Fortune and professed herself shocked at the time that she didn't know much about Irish life and history.
In the 1990s her roles have been sparse and well chosen. She has performed in a couple of plays, one of which, Suzanna Andler, she agonised over because of a problem with learning lines.
She had no great love for Shakespeare before Kenneth Branagh approached her to play Queen Gertrude in his movie of Hamlet. It was a challenge and she went at it with typical enthusiasm.
The film fulfilled the Christie criteria in that it informed her artistic consciousness, and she gave one of the best performances of her life.
Her Oscar-nominated performance in Afterglow is, according to one reviewer, so captivating that "she alone justifies the price of admission." She won the Best Actress Award at last year's San Sebastian Film festival for the role.
She still lives in a stone cottage in Wales which she shares with friends. Her house in London is also full of acquaintances. She is not married and has no children but has a long-time companion in Duncan Campbell, a journalist with the Guardian.
She plans to retire to France and grow old with a bunch of childless friends.
The contradictions continue.
Recently it was revealed that Christie had had a face-lift in order to ensure she was still able to secure good roles. Not surprisingly, given her iconic status, this had the female columnists of the British press wringing their hands.
Well, really, they moaned, if Julie Christie is having face-lifts what hope is there for the rest of us?