Screen Icons: Julie Christie

Released: 12th March 2007. A collection of four classic films starring Julie Christie. In 'Billy Liar' (1963), undertaker's clerk Billy (Tom Courtenay) escapes his dreary small town existence in a 1950s Northern town by living in a fantasy world where he realises his ambitions. When his job, unsympathetic working class family and two fiancees threaten to become too much, he meets the fashionable Liz (Christie), who offers him his one chance for real escape. Christie won an Oscar for her role in 'Darling' (1965). In the film she plays Diana Scott, an ambitious model determined to make it to the top. Using her sexuality, she manipulates powerful men, but in so doing becomes a prisoner of the jet-setting lifestyle she once yearned for. Dirk Bogarde co-stars as Diana's long-suffering boyfriend. 'Far From The Madding Crowd' (1967) is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 19th-century story of a woman's passion. Bathsheba (Christie) is in love with three very different men who are also in love with her: her first love is a handsome and wayward soldier; the second is the local noble Lord, and the third is an ever-patient farmer. 'The Go-Between' (1970) is an adaptation of the classic novel by L.P. Hartley. A young teenage boy, Leo (Dominic Guard), is invited to a wealthy school friend's rich family estate and is drawn into a love affair between his friend's twenty-something sister, Marian (Christie), and the family neighbour, even though she is engaged to be married. She uses Leo as a go-between, sending messages to her lover. Despite feeling he is betraying her fiance Hugh (Edward Fox), Leo carries on being the messager boy and discovers more about the attraction between men and women along the way.