Julia Ormond is the daughter of Josephine Ormond a laboratory technician and John Ormond, a stockbroker. She is the second of five children born to her parents. She attended private schools, first Guildford High School and then Cranleigh School, where early lead performances in Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady began to draw attention.

After one year of art school, she transferred to Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where she graduated in 1988.

Ormond first appeared on British television in the 1989 serial Traffik, about the illegal heroin trade from the Far East to the streets of Europe. Ormond played the drug-addicted daughter of the lead character, a Home Office minister in the UK government engaged in combating heroin importation. This early role won glowing reviews.

Ormond 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 about Rape, War, and Women, which won a CableACE Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and was an official selection of the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals.