CINEMA: MRS. MILLER IS NOW HAMLET'S MOM

Julie Christie doesn't like Shakespeare. So when Kenneth Branagh wanted her for his lush new Hamlet, she was disinclined to accept. "I just find Gertrude such a weird part. And I didn't know if I wanted to get into all that emotionalizing," says the actress whose cool presence lit up classic films like Dr. Zhivago and McCabe & Mrs. Miller but who hasn't been seen much onscreen since the '60s and early '70s. Friends changed her mind about Gertrude. "I'm ever so glad they did," she says.

But don't expect her well-reviewed turn as Hamlet's mom to herald a full-scale return to film for the still winsome 56-year-old. "I'm not really a suitable person to be an actress," she insists. "I can't bear attention. But I've no qualifications to be anything else." Christie says she's innumerate, has spatial dyslexia and memory problems, so careers she'd prefer, like biology, are out of the question.

Fortunately, she can be lured back to film for the right director. While on location in Newfoundland with Alan Rudolph for Afterglow, she took the plight of the local Inuit people to heart and is now campaigning on their behalf. An inveterate lefty, she plans to leave Britain for somewhere like-minded, France or Spain. "I won't see my own history being dismantled in front of my own eyes."

--By Belinda Luscombe