Julie Christie

Born: April 14 1941
Where: Chukua, Assam, India

The Oscar-winning actress enjoyed the spotlight durng the 1960s and 1970s with appearances in Doctor Zhivago and Darling.

Other notable roles included parts in McCabe and Mrs Miller (for which she as Oscar-nominated) and the seminal chiller Don't Look Now.

She got her break as star of British TV's A For Andromeda in 1960 and had small parts in two Ken Annakin films before achieving big-screen success with leading roles in John Schlesinger's Billy Liar.

She won a best actress Oscar for the tailor-made Darling and also starred opposite Omar Sharif in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago.

Subsequent roles included John Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between alongside Alan Bates.

Christie moved to the United States in the 1970s; her sojourn there distinguished by three movies she made with lover (and later pal) Warren Beatty.

She was excellent as Beatty's business partner in Robert Altman's deconstructionist Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller and handled her assignment in Hal Ashby's Shampoo with ease.

As the woman who inspires Beatty in the remake Heaven Can Wait, however, Christie seemed miscast but still pulled off her part as the love interest.

Perhaps her best performance of the decade was for her cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg in the downright scary yet erotic thriller Don't Look Now.

Since the 80s, the extremely private Christie has chosen fewer, and lower profile, projects, while continuing to turn in exemplary performances, as in Heat and Dust and Miss Mary.

She was also the ravishingly beautiful, alcoholic widow in the otherwise disappointing Fools of Fortune in 1990.

Reuniting with director Schlesinger and frequent co-star Alan Bates, she showed herself at her very best in the HBO production of Separate Tables.

Christie returned to films after a six year absence to co-star with Dennis Quaid in the medieval epic Dragonheart and went on to co-star as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's full-length version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The following year she received her third Oscar nomination in Alan Rudolph's Afterglow.

Despite the late-career fanfare, Christie continued to work at her own pace and generally eschewed commercial fare for more visionary and independent minded projects.

These included supporting turns in Hal Hartley's mythic No Such Thing, Rudolf van den Berg's poignant Snapshot opposite Burt Reynolds and the little-seen romantic comedy I'm With Lucy.

Her next film was far more high-profile, with the actress playing Thetis, in Troy, the Brad Pitt-starring, action-oriented adaptation of Homer's epic poem about the Trojan War.

In 2006, Christie received critical acclaim for her portrayal of a woman suffering from Alzheimers Disease in Away From Her.