Movieline - March 2001

Not that long ago, British beauty Julia Ormond was being touted around Hollywood as the next Julia Roberts. She had a magical run when she nabbed leading roles in three high-profile features, Legends of the Fall in 1994, and First Knight and Sabrina in 1995. Indeed within a span of roughly 18 months, Ormond found herself in the arms of Brad Pitt, Sean Connery, Richard Gere and Harrison Ford. But A-Iist stardom proved to be elusive. True, Legends was a hit with audiences, but First Knight tanked, Gere being far more convincing in Armani than armour. Ormond's real career downturn, though, may have been a direct result of the Sabrina remake, a movie that was haunted by the ghosts of Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Billy Wilder, and that disappointed at the box office. "I was an actor sitting in my flat in the East End of London when the call came through. You're not going to say `no' to doing a romantic comedy with Harrison Ford directed by Sydney fucking Pollack!" says Ormond today. "I also thought it would help me get my head out of my own ass in terms of taking my profession and craft too seriously."

Following the Sabrina debacle, Ormond gave a riveting performance in 1997's chilling Smilla's Sense of Snow, but the intense e, offbeat thriller never found an audience. After that, she says, "The stuff I was being offered was just a refrain of what I'd done, so I decided to take some time off and get my life back."

Now newly married and back in L A., Ormond is making films again, the first being The Prime Gig, a drama set in the world of telemarketing that costars Vince Vaughn and Ed Harris. Though Hollywood hasn't changed much in the years since she's worked here, Ormond insists she has: "I've become less frantic. When things first happened it was incredibly sudden, and the notion of strangers recognizing me and talking to me was weird. People would say, `What did you expect? Celebrity goes hand in hand with what you're trying to do. But as a British actor your sights aren't set on that: You just go from job to job, trying to move up."

--Jeffrey Lantos