Julie Christie

An iconic figure of the 1960s, actress Julie Christie was an Academy Award-winning actress who appeared in a small but substantial number of classic films in her native England and America during the '60s and early 1970s. She was perhaps best known to international audiences as Lara in David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), but also enjoyed memorable leading roles in Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971) and "Shampoo" (1975), both starring her longtime romantic companion Warren Beatty. An independent attitude and interest in political affairs reduced her screen appearances in the 1980s, but she made a triumphant return to film in the mid-1990s in Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (1996). Since then, she made several notable movies, including "Afterglow" (1997) with Altman, which netted her third Academy Award nomination, before playing the mother of Achilles in "Troy" (2004), Madame Rosmerta in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004), and Kate Winslet's disapproving mother in "Finding Neverland" (2004). In "Away from Her" (2006), she gave a moving performance as a woman stricken with Alzheimer's that earned her high praise and a number of critics awards, all of which solidified Christie's standing as one of the finest veteran actresses of her time.