Ormond was born in Epsom, Surrey, England, to Josephine, a laboratory technician, and John Ormond, a successful computer software designer who became a millionaire by age thirty.

Ormond's father left his wife and children when Julia was still young. She attended Guildford High School and Cranleigh School (a private school), and then studied acting in London at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1988.

Ormond's stage credits include "The Rehearsal", "Wuthering Heights", "The Crucible", Christopher Hampton's "Faith, Hope and Charity", for which she won the London Drama Critics' Award for Best Newcomer, and David Hare's "My Zinc Bed", for which she earned a Laurence Olivier Award nomination.

Her film credits include Jerry Zucker's First Knight, Captives with Tim Roth, Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Aidan Quinn, Sydney Pollack's Sabrina with Harrison Ford, "Resistance" and Smilla's Sense of Snow. She also had a major role in the controversial Peter Greenaway film The Baby of Mâcon with Ralph Fiennes.

Her TV credits include HBO's "Stalin" and "Iron-Jawed Angels", the drama series "Traffik", "Varian's War" and "Animal Farm." She also has an independent production company, Indican Productions, based in New York City, and she executive produced the Cinemax Reel Life documentary "Calling the Ghosts: A Story of Rape, War and Women", which won a CableACE Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and was an official selection of the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals.