IT'S hardly surprising Julie Christie is wary of journalists. A trawl through recent newspaper cuttings yields a spate of drooling and condescension, or a queasy blend of both: drooling over her undiminished beauty, and condescension about her active espousal of various political causes over the past two decades.
Obviously, this 56-year-old actress welcomes neither response: increasingly, she makes careful, deliberate choices about the films she accepts, the directors she wants to work with, and the amount of space in her life film work occupies.
Contrary to her reputation, she is not a recluse, and last weekend visited Derry as a guest of the Foyle Film Festival, where she introduced a screening of Don't Look Now (1973) and a promotional excerpt from Kenneth Branagh's forthcoming.
Hamlet, in which she plays Hamlet's mother, Gertrude.
"I'm quite a loner," she says, during a very brief interview, in which her diffidence and self-deprecation are evident. "I find all the socialising that film-making entails very difficult - the hours spent during the shoot, talking about it with the people you are about to do the scene with. I wish. I could be like that, but I'm not. I'm just not good at it."
Yet, responding to an audience of Derry school students after the Hamlet clip, Christie is enthusiastic and forthcoming, drawn into animated exchanges about the role of the much-maligned Gertrude and her relationship with Hamlet. This is probably because the making of this, film was a particularly enjoyable experience, "the happiest film I ever made".
"I wasn't keen on playing Gertrude. I didn't know anything about it, except that it was generally perceived to be desirable. Gertrude is not a great part, in fact. She is not very well developed - none of the women, in the play are. She's a passive character who never makes herself dear, so you just have to make it up."
For Christie Gertrude is "a woman of some honour", whose weakness is a rather selfish pursuit of lust. She's irresponsible, but she's not hiding anything. Okay, it was a bit much marrying again so soon when you've got a neurotic son around, but she really hasn't done anything wrong.
"I'd like to do some more Shakespeare now, after this experience. It was Kenneth Branagh who made it happen. Perhaps it's because he is an actor himself, he was able to help each of us to find the most truthful performance. We were all doing our best to find the truth."
The director is the most important determining factor for Christie when she is considering a film offer. Working with people she respects is essential. She has just finished shooting with the American independent director Alan Rudolph, whom she admires, and recalls her joy, 30 years ago, at being chosen by Truffaut for Fahrenheit 451 - "a dream come true". Nic Roeg is still one of her heroes, and although she seems lukewarm about a lot of her past work, Don't Look Now is a film she regards with some pride, acknowledging its chilling power.
"It's not an actors' film," she said, introducing it to the Derry audience, and certainly, although her and Donald Sutherland's performances are very moving, it is Roeg's composition of the accreting images of water, shattering glass, oozing reds and darkness - in liquid, groundless space, that remain in the mind, contributing to the disturbing dislocation of time and oppressive sense of foreboding.
"Don't Look Now was very rewarding, at an emotional level," she says, - "but uncomfortable to watch now. I don't know whether I like having all those dark areas stirred about. It's about fate, I suppose, and I don't know whether I believe in fate - apart, obviously, from the fact that we're all going to die."
As an actor, she is still learning all the time, she says, especially from, her friend Lindy Davis who directed her in a West End revival of Pinter's Old Times last year, and from watching other actors. "I feel I know nothing. I am in awe of other people's acting skills, of their commitment, the way they are almost consumed. I see people like Nick Nolte, who is in the Alan Rudolph film, going over and over his scenes, teasing out the finer points of his interpretation and he's a big star. And then in Hamlet, I watched the dedication of Kate Winslet (playing Ophelia) who's 20 years old and an extraordinary actress.
She herself was never like that, she says. "You know, when I was offered Dr Zkivago I didn't know about David Lean. I didn't know much about anything." And, even though she has since spent much of her time informing herself about film-making and is a passionate cineaste, she still, has no driving ambition to act. "There is no film that I'm burning to be in. There is such a lot attached to the whole business that I can't stand. And, a lot of psychic energy is expended, which can be terribly frightening."
When she speaks about her early film career, it is as if things simply happened to her. Dubbed "The face of 1965" when she won an Oscar for her performance in Darling, she is now resigned to being questioned about her iconic status in London in the 1960s and Hollywood in the 1970s, saying this is "the price to be paid".
"But the people who ask me about those days know more about it all than me. I don't know the person - they are asking about. She is a stranger."
Elaborating, she says. "For one thing, I wasn't very political then. I didn't know the messages that are carried in film." Since her years living in Beverly Hills with Warren Beatty in the 1970s, Christie has pursued political causes, campaigning on behalf of Cambodians, Palestinians, East Timor, Nicaragua, animal rights and Greenham Common, and against arms sales to Iraq. Her role in Pat O'Connor's Fools Of Fortune (1990) prompted her to learn about Irish history and politics, which still interests her.
For her, being on location abroad is an opportunity to learn about what's happening in the world. "People moan about being away for so long, and of course I'm dying to get back to my house in Wales, but I also know how lucky we are. It's a chance to spend time in places I'd never see otherwise - like Guatamala, Slovakia." Acknowledging the enormous toll that the film business takes on personal life, she says, "I don't have family, or children, but I have dear, dear friends and they come and see me when I'm on location.
"But I like lots of things much better than film-making: reading, researching, watching films, going for long walks ...