John d Green’s session with Julie Christie for Birds of Britain on 25 September 1966 was one of the few sessions taking place away from his Kensington studio base. The location was the seaside town of Weymouth in Dorset, where she was shooting Far From the Madding Crowd. Julie Christie was twenty six at the time of the shoot.
John recalls the session fondly:
“Julie Christie was my most memorable shoot. I had always had great admiration for her acting skills. It was a huge privilege to photograph her. We drove down to Weymouth where she was filming Far from the Madding Crowd with Terence Stamp. We created quite a stir as we drove through Weymouth, Julie Christie, David Tree (the art director) and myself shoe horned into the front of my E-type Jaguar with a trombone strapped to the luggage rack on the back. The idea was a sunset shot on the beach but unfortunately English weather prevailed and it was a grey day. I got a shot, but I was not too happy, so we went back to Julie’s hotel where we shot the majority of the pictures in the hotel room. It was an easy session, she was such a natural and such a beautiful girl, she didn’t need directing.”
Julie Christie’s breakthrough film role was in Billy Liar (1963) but she came to international attention in 1965 for her performances in Darling – for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress – and Doctor Zhivago, the eighth highest-grossing film of all time.
There have been suggestions that the lyrics from the Kinks song ‘Waterloo Sunset’ “Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station/Every Friday night” refer to Julie Christie and Terence Stamp, but Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography.
