Politics & Power Quote by Julie Christie

Julie Christie delivers this like a shrug with a glint in the eye: America wasn’t a destination so much as a series of irresistible detours. The line weaponizes casualness. “Some American or other” pretends at vagueness, as if lovers were as interchangeable as airports, but that throwaway phrasing is the point: it lets her keep control of the story. She’s not confessing; she’s editing. The men are “chaps,” not soulmates, and that downgrading is a kind of freedom - affectionate, lightly dismissive, and very English in its refusal to romanticize.

The subtext is a sly reversal of the usual transatlantic myth. American culture loves to imagine itself as the great magnet - the place that transforms visiting Europeans into converts. Christie reframes the pull as personal, not patriotic. She stayed for bodies, chemistry, companionship, the private pleasures that ignore the grand narratives of “finding yourself” in New York or Los Angeles. It’s a reminder that migration is often less about ideology than proximity: who you meet, who keeps you from buying the return ticket.

Context matters: Christie came up during a moment when fame, film work, and sexual politics were rapidly loosening. As a 1960s star with real agency, she can depict romance not as something that happens to her, but as a series of choices she made, enjoyed, and moved on from. The wit is that the line flirts with scandal while refusing melodrama. It’s a travel memoir rewritten as a love ledger - breezy, unsentimental, quietly in charge.