In director John Schlesinger`s BILLY LIAR, a young Englishman named Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) dreams of escaping from his dull working class family and his dead-end job as an undertaker`s assistant. Living in constant conflict with his parents and with the many women with whom he is romantically involved (he is engaged to two), Billy regularly escapes into a rich fantasy world. Sometimes he imagines himself to be the powerful dictator of a small country. In another fantasy, he wants to become the script writer for a popular comedian on television. Unfortunately, in his mind, if not in reality, these fantasies are not so far off, which is exactly the reason that everybody calls him Billy Liar. An immediate sensation as first a novel, then a hit play--both written by Keith Waterhouse who also served as screenwriter on the film--Schlesinger`s screen version was a British landmark in the fertile cinema of the late 1950s and early `60s, and launched the career of Julie Christie, who plays Liz, one of Billy`s flames.