Her first film role came in Peter Greenaway's film The Baby of Mâcon, in which her character was raped by 200 men. "Sadly we found that marriage and careers for us did not match." They had, she says, 'married for the right reasons – we were in love', but with Rory's theatre career taking him around the country and Julia finding herself with more TV work (she played an upper-class junkie in Traffik and Catherine the Great in the miniseries Young Catherine), the couple spent less and less time together. She eventually ended up marrying her Heathcliff – actor Rory Edwards – but the marriage ended after six years in 1994. She won the 1989 London Critics' Award for Best Newcomer in Christopher Hampton's Faith Hope and Charity at the age of 24 and she played Cathy in Wuthering Heights at the Crucible in Sheffield. But the minute I started working, all of that faded out".Īfter drama school and her first professional job (an ad for cottage cheese), Julia spent a decade carving out an impressive stage career, making a mockery of later suggestions that her film success came from nowhere. She attended the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London and admits that, "in my late teens and college years there was a phase where I was drinking ridiculous amounts – but out of fun more than anything else! My digs were awful, and I was around fun people and it was a release from being a child. Nevertheless, her passion for acting came not, she says, from a need for attention or to assuage any pain, 'but simply because I am a creative type'. She found the pain and isolation extremely hard. If you stick someone in a box then they start to fit that box because there's nowhere else for them to go." "The down side was that I was the only kid in my class who had divorced parents and I was slightly pigeonholed. One of the great things about my childhood was that I never felt limited by being female. My teachers were both horrified and impressed when I could change a plug. She was a great example to me and taught me everything, such as how to do my own washing and ironing and cooking. "Divorce was still quite unusual in the late 60s, but there was a lot of good stuff for me in being brought up by a single working mum. "I certainly don't feel my parents did anything wrong by divorcing," says Julia. She was very young when her parents divorced and Julia lived with her mother in Guildford, Surrey, while seeing her father at weekends. Julia was born in 1965, the second of five children, to John, a stockbroker, and Josephine, a lab technician. "Our lives have gone in very separate directions, but we bump into each other every now and then and it's always very sweet to see him." Julia and Brad don't share any scenes together but it is a neat reunion nonetheless. "It's a really beautiful story about love and death, with a lovely message about how you can want something that doesn't necessarily happen yet still have no regrets about your life." Julia plays the 80-year-old Daisy's daughter, Caroline, 'and she talks to my character about the experience of knowing Benjamin Button,' says Julia, a slight transatlantic twang He falls in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), though they only consummate their relationship when they are both 40. It's based on an F Scott Fitzgerald story and stars Brad Pitt (again) as Button, a man born at the age of 80 who gets progressively younger. One such role is in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, due for release next year. I'm enjoying the effort that goes into making a supporting role more interesting." "I've got a few films coming up where I'm allowed to create a character with more depth than I did before. "I really like what's happening with my career now," she says. While many actresses conduct their interviews on autopilot, Julia gives each question so much consideration before answering that you're tempted to ask it again in case she didn't hear the first time. The roles that made her famous – those of the shining-eyed ingénue – never seemed quite big enough for a woman with the depth and intelligence she displays. With masses of chestnut hair falling about her shoulders, and enviably slim despite her unfussy attitude to food (she orders fish and chips), she still has the questioning, dark-eyed looks that initially captivated the critics. Now 42 and living in California, she looks far from battle-weary.
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