Britain said " Happy Birthday" to Julie Christie and old men remembered a time when, as boys, they could have spent their dinner money on her

Julie Christie today and in t.v. and films - top to bottom :

Andromeda.
Billy Liar.
Darling.
Zhivago.
Fahrenheit 451.
Madding Crowd.
Petulia.

Julie Christie was 69 years old on Monday. Things you probably didn't know about her :
* born in 1941 in , Assam, India where her father ran tea plantations.
* her mother was a painter from Hove in Sussex.
* she had a brother, as well as a half-sibling from her father's affair with an Indian mistress.
* back in England studied as a boarder at the independent 'Convent of Our Lady School' in St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, from which she was later expelled.
* as a teenager at Wycombe Court School, she played the role of the Dauphin in a school production of George Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan'.

I first remember seeing her in the 1961 science fiction series on BBC television called 'A for Andromeda'. I was 14 and she was 20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvcC2T2TQOc

Then, when I was 16 she played Liz, the friend and would-be lover of the eponymous 'Billy Liar' who was played by Tom Courtenay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m54NABR2pEw

When I was 18 she played the amoral model, Diana Scott in 'Darling'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beut0h1i7y0
In the same year she appeared as Lara Antipova in David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel 'Doctor Zhivago'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=old4K4Tpo8c

When I was 19, she was in Truffaut's 'Fahrenheit 451'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQ-yGCyjyM

A year later, with me at 20 and she at 26, she played Thomas Hardy's heroine 'Bathsheba Everdene' in Schlesinger's 'Far from the Madding Crowd'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuHlMn1scAI
And that wonderful scene with Terrence Stamp as Sergeant Troy on Maiden Castle :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGWUt0wgHg0

In that same year
From 'The Kinks'rock band, Ray Davies wrote 'Waterloo Sunset'
The story : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Sunset
The song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY
The lyrics :

Dirty old river,
must you keep rolling,
flowing into the night.

People so busy,
make me feel dizzy,
taxi light shines so bright.

But I don't feel afraid,
as long as I gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
I am in Paradise.

Every day I look at the world from my window,
chilly, chilly is the evening time,
Waterloo Sunset's fine.

Terry meets Julie,
Waterloo Station,
every friday night.
But I'am so lazy,
don't want to wonder,
I stay at home at night.

But I don't feel afraid,
as long as I gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
I am in Paradise.

Every day I look at the world,
from my window,
chilly, chilly is the evening time,
Waterloo sunset's fine.

Millions of people,
swarming like flies round,
Waterloo Underground.

But Terry and Julie,
cross over the river,
where they feel safe and sound.
And they don't feel afraid,
as long as they gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
they are in Paradise.

Waterloo Sunset's fine.

When I reached 21 she played the lead character, Petulia Danner, opposite George C. Scott, in Richard Lester's 'Petulia'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqNNEBK41mU

Later films followed, but by this time I had no dinner money or student grant to spend on the woman Warren Beatty described as : "the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person I had ever known."