Julia Ormond
Actress/Activist/Founder of Alliance to Stop Slavery & End Trafficking
Julia Ormond is currently in production on the second season of Lifetime’s hit series, The Witches of East End which will premiere on July 6th. The actress has had a diverse television career beginning with her first role in the Channel 4 series Traffick, which received four BAFTA TV Awards and two additional nominations in 1990. More recently, Ormond received an Emmy® Award in 2010 for her role in the HBO movie Temple Grandin and in 2012 was nominated for a second acting Emmy for her guest role on Mad Men.
Among her early film work, Julia Ormond starred in Peter Greenaway's Baby of Macon, the epic Legends of the Fall directed by Ed Zwick, First Knight directed by Jerry Zucker, and Sydney Pollack’s Sabrina. She has since appeared in Smilla’s Sense of Snow directed by Billy August, Nikita Mikhalkov's Barber of Siberia which opened Cannes, David Lynch's Inland Empire, David Fincher's fantasy-drama, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Steven Soderbergh’s biopic, Che. Other film credits include Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance and Zal Batmanglij’s The East, which premiered at Sundance in 2013.
Ormond received an Emmy Award for executive producing the documentary Calling the Ghosts: A Story of Rape, War and Women, which was used as a lobbying tool for the arrest of the indicted war criminals in former Yugoslavia. A screening at the Council of Foreign Relations spurred legislation that later enabled the arrest of Slobodan Milosevich. She participated on Call and Response, a documentary on the state of slavery today, which was one of the first documentaries to use cell phone technology to immediately donate to a cause.
After attending art school and graduating in 1987 from Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, Ormond performed in several theatre productions. In 1989, she received the London Drama Critics' Award for Best Newcomer in Christopher Hampton's Faith, Hope and Charity, and in 1995, she won the award for ShoWest Female Star of Tomorrow. Ormond has participated in multiple film festival juries including Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Flanders, Tribeca, Morelia, Telluride Documentary and Sundance. Ormond is a former United Nations Goodwill Ambassador against Trafficking and Slavery, the founding co-chair of Film Aid International, and the Founder and President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSETcampaign.org). ASSET works with victims, NGOs, government officials, corporations and individuals to create/advance and support systemic changes needed to eradicate enslavement. The organization was the chief sponsor of the CA Transparency in Supply Chains Law (TISC) of 2010; a consumer rights disclosure bill requiring major manufacturers and retailers to make public their policy on trafficking and slavery all the way down to the raw materials within the supply chains of their products. TISC CA went into effect in January 2012. ASSET is currently supporting the work of the UK version of the organization. As a human rights advocate, Ormond has travelled the world witnessing, assessing solutions and challenges, and has appeared as council to the United States House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations. Among numerous humanitarian awards, in particular for her work on eradicating enslavement, Ormond has received The World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award and Women for Women International’s Peace Award.
Ormond currently resides in Los Angeles with her daughter, and two dogs.