Julia Ormond is remembered best by Russian filmgoers’ as Jane in Nikita Mikhalkov´s “The Barber of Siberia“, a strong and cunning adventuress who easily cheats men. Julia has become just the actress to play such kind of women. The fact of the matter is that she has her own score to settle with men.

THE SCORE BEGAN IN CHILDHOOD

Julia opened that score very long ago at the age of six when, together with her mother and elder sister, she left the beautiful 20-room house in which her early childhood had passed. They had to leave their native town of Epsom in Surrey and move to a less prestigious area of London.

Julia´s father, John Ormond, was a very successful computer software designer and by his 30s had become a millionaire. Soon after that he decided to divorce his wife Josephine and divided the children according to their sex: his three sons with him and two daughters with their mother.

Not that Julia did not love her mother and did not want to stay with her. She was just indignant at the terrible injustice: the men stayed in the home and the women were sent to an undeserved exile. Certainly their father gave them money for living and on big holidays even invited the girls to his home, but all that only re-opened the wounds of growing up. Julia´s mother had dreamed of true scientific research but had never been able to do better than a job as a University laboratory technician. They lived a fairly modest life, especially compared to her father and brothers.

The second “entry“ on her personal score against men was made when Julia was only twelve. She was in love with Roger Beech, a classmate of hers. Once – what luck! – Roger came up to her and invited her to a football match with him. Julia was eager to go with him, not only to the stadium but to end of the world! But, at the very last moment Roger called her up and told her all was cancelled. Julia suspected something was wrong, bought a tiket, and went to the football match alone. Sure enough, Roger was there with a girl whose company he had preferred to Julia´s! “It´s too much!“, decided Julia. “Men seem to have too high opinions of themselves. It´s time to put them in their place.“

Julia persuaded her mother to send her to Cranleigh, a private school. Actually, the students there were trained for entering a military school, i.e. working hard on exact sciences, sports, shooting. Small wonder that the students at Cranleigh were mostly boys. But Julia needed to prove that she wasn´t second to men at all. And she wasn´t! In due course, she became the best in physics and field hockey – there was not a single girl in the school team except her.

But she always had bad marks for her behavior. She wasn´t upset about it at all, though. On the contrary, she was proud of her having bested the boys in misbehaving.

There was an amateur theater in the school, too. Julia, who secretly admired art and not physics or sport, made her debut on stage in “Guys and Dolls“. She flatly refused to play a “doll“, however, and insisted on the role one of the “guys“.

ACTRESS FOR “RUSSIAN“ PARTS

Julia had never seriously thought of entering a military school. She dreamed of becoming a graphics designer (an abstrakt artist like her grandparents), making a name, earning a lot of money and building a house as good as the one where her father and brothers lived. She studied a whole year at the art school before she realized that what appealed to her a lot more was the stage. She was eager to play the parts of strong women who always gain the upper hand over men. Besides it´s a lot easier to become famous as an actress, isn´t it? Julia fancied how brilliant she would look at the Oscar ceremony – a low-necked dress, diamonds and all that – and she decided to enter London´s (the Webber-Douglas) Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Study there was not cheap. Julia´s father offered her financial support, but she was proud enough to reject it and preferred to earn money by working as a waitress and a shop assistant at a little shop in Heathrow Airport after classes. Ormond first become famous in 1987 after she filmed a TV ad for cottage cheese. She was 22 then.  Then she started to work in the theater – she played the leading parts in plays by Bernard Shaw and Artur Miller. Her partner was often a young  actor, Rory Edwards. As often happens, they fell in love with each other and soon got married.

Married life did not reconcile Julia with the stronger sex. On the contrary, it became a new ground for rivalry. She never missed an oportunity to show Rory that her gift and success were greater than his. And how proud she was when she was awarded the 1989 London Drama Critics Award for Best Newcomer! “She was fussing such a lot about that award as  if it was at least an Oscar,“ Rory recalls. And when the couple received an offer to star in the Canadian serial “Young Catherine“  where Julia played the Russian empress and Rory (the oldest brother of) her lover Alexis Orlov, Julia certainly made it a condition to the producers that her salary must be at least ten thousand higher than her busband´s. All ended Rory´s shameful flight from the “field of battle“, i.e., he sued for divorce. It was the right time for Julia to think it over – maybe she was wrong about something. But she did not do that – instead, she made it  one more entry on her list of grievances against the male part the human race. She made a vow not to marry again and to dedicate herself entirely to work.

However, in 1998 Julia broke her oath and got herself a boyfriend – gynecologist Will Edridge. There was no question of marriage, and they did not even see much of each other as Julia was very busy working indeed. She starred in “Baby of Macon“ (this film was no so provocative and unusual that most countries did not dare show it), “Stalin“ (after “Young Catherine“ they decided in Hollywood that Ormond was fine for “Russian“ roles and it was Julia to whom they offered the part of Nadezhda Alliueva – incidentally, it was then that she met Nikita Mikhalkov), then “Legend sof the Fall“, “First Knight“ (in that film Julia played a part that was the third in its importance after the parts of Sean Connery and Richard Gere which distressed her immensely), “Sabrina“ and “Smilla´s Sense of Snow“.

She is considered a “difficult“ actress, as she never missed an oportunity to tell the directors just what she thinks about their films. Any other actress would have long been defamed as quarrelsome and unable to work with. But, whether due to her strength of mind or fine artistic flair, Julia is highly regarded. Sometimes she is invited for consultation to analyze the strong and weak point sof this or that skript. And, five years ago, Ormond started her own production copany “Indican Productions“ and released a documentary about women in concentration camps in Bosna and Herzegovina.

In a word, Julia has become really popular and it´s not without reason that the magazine “People“ mentioned her among 50 most beautiful people of the world, but it had not come to the Oscar nomination, yet …

DREAMS COMING TRUE

Initially, the leading female role in “The Barber of Siberia“ was intended for Meryl Streep but preparations for shooting were drawn out too long and Streep got old. Mikhalkov had been puzzling over the choice between Sharon Stone, Kim Bassinger, Andie MacDovell and Jodie Foster. But having taken a  better look at Julia Ormond he realized, she was just the one he wanted!

Julia took the whole thing with much responsibility: her charakter is an American from Chicago and for a born Brit to play her in a Russian film is not much easier than to portray a Russian convincingly in an American movie. Julia specially went over to Chicago to pick up the local accent and … didn´t excel herself. Her English remained London English all the same. “It´s simply impossible to pronounce words like those American do!“ – said Ormond filled with exasperation.

Going to Russia she was dreaming of visiting Siberia – with that exotic voyage she could just show a lot of men actors who refuse to film somewhere beyond the “civilized world“, i.e. Western Europe and America. But Mikhalkov decided to spare the star and all of Julia´s scenes were shot in Moscow, Prague and Portugal, but they did not take her to Krasnoyarks. As a matter of fact, it did not matter much because the result of the work with Mikhalkov was another dream, a really cherished dream of Julia´s, came true: “The Barber of Siberia“ was nominated for an Oscar (selected to open the Cannes Film Festival) in 1999 and Julia became a guest of honor at the ceremony. The day before she phoned her father and dropped a hint that he´d better watch the broadcast.

Julia had not been true Julia – as if an Oscar (the Cannes opening) wouldn´t have caused enough sensation, in the presence of a big crowd of people and in the limelight of television, she introduced to everybody … her new husband. And it wasn´t gynecologist Will Edridge at all but a certain John Rubin. “Like my father, he does design but only it´s computer design“, commented Julia. When they had managed to meet and, moreover, get married, is still a mystery.

This union is almost two years old now. Does it mean that at 37 Julia has sown all her wild oats and the “friendly rivalry“ between herself and men is finally over? Maybe in John Rubin she has found the one to whom she doesn´t have to prove anything but can just be happy? Time will show … The house where the couple have made their home is very similar to the one Julia had to leave long ago in her childhood, and the details of their life are kept by the masters of the house within its walls.

Irina Lykova