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For the key role of Zhivago, Lean first thought of his Lawrence, Peter O'Toole, then, to add "a certain foreignness," he decided on Egyptian-born Omar Sharif (whose hair was thatched over and his eyes slightly pulled back to give him a vaguely Tartar gaze). For subsidiary roles, Lean picked two knights, Sir Alec Guinness as Zhivago's brother (making Guinness' fifth picture with Lean, beginning with Great Expectations) and Sir Ralph Richardson, who plays Tonya's father, with Siobhan McKenna as Tonya's mother. To add further strength to the cast, Lean tapped Rita Tushingham (The Girl with Green Eyes), Tom Courtenay (King Rat), and, for the role of Lara's calculating seducer Komarovsky, the film's only American actor, Rod Steiger.
Bowled Over. Lara, in Pasternak's phrase, was "unequaled in spiritual beauty—martyred, stubborn, extravagant, crazy, irresponsible, adored." Besides, during the film she must range in age from 17 to 40. When Lean tested Julie Christie, 24, for Lara, he had seen her only in Billy Liar—in which by simply walking wordlessly down a street she made cinema history. Asked to fly to Madrid for a screen test, Julie figured, "They must be off their nuts," went mainly for the free holiday.
And then she met Lean. "He bowled me over with his force," says Julie. "He made me feel he wanted something, and I would give it to him." Says Lean: "You watch her, wondering which way this cat's going to jump. She doesn't disclose everything. The difference between good actors and big stars is that good actors disclose everything; big stars are mysterious."
When the cast assembled outside Ma drid one year ago on Dec. 28, they found almost ten acres of reproductions of Moscow streets and buildings, and three hours north, on the Spanish plains near Soria, were Zhivago's Ural settings. MGM, which financed the film, had all but given Lean a blank check. As a result, costume details, down to wool petticoats, were authentic and logistics were superb. Marveled Sir Ralph Richardson, "This is what it must have been like traveling with Napoleon."
Hot Winter. Rita Tushingham, who plays Lara's and Zhivago's love child, found working on the set "terribly intense." Tom Courtenay grimly recalls being asked to pose as Strelnikov on the platform of the armored train: "No dialogue. No expression. But that bloody scene took two days to shoot." Geraldine Chaplin's most vivid memory is working in the hot Spanish sun while wearing black wool stockings, boots, three sweaters and a fur jacket: "I was so soaking wet, I felt I was leaving big soggy footprints."
"There were times when I felt like killing David," Julie Christie confesses. But she also admits that, as an actress disciplined in underplaying roles, she was taught to soar by Lean. "David would say to me, 'None of that timid sort of stuff.' So I let myself go. I went over the top. It was exciting."