Apparatus for driving a cholesteric liquid crystal display wherein the display includes cholesteric liquid crystals having a first planar reflective state and a second transparent focal conic state, which is respectively responsive to different applied fields. The apparatus further includes an addressing structure having rows and columns of conductors arranged so that when a column and a row overlap, they define a selectable pixel or segment to be viewable or non-viewable, and a single drive chip responsive to a single input voltage for applying selected voltages to rows and columns of conductors, so that selectable unipolar fields are applied across the cholesteric liquid crystals of the pixels to selectively change the state of the cholesteric liquid crystal.