Julian Fellowes — writer, director, producer, and former actor — is a mainstay of historical movies and TV shows. He worked as an actor, playing mostly smaller parts, then in the 1990s switched to writing screenplays. When he wrote (and produced) the film Gosford Park, things REALLY took off for him; they went supersonic when he created Downton Abbey. He’s the go-to for stiff-upper-lip period aristocracy stories, and since he’s so pivotal to the frock flicks genre, I thought it would be interesting to run down his career in historical movies and TV shows! This is a long one, strap in!
First Era: Actor
According to The Telegraph, Fellowes,
“toiled as a minor character actor, playing the parts of vicars, colonels and hospital consultants in provincial rep or, if he was lucky, the West End, sensing all the time that even these parts were only coming his way because he was perceived as a caricature buffer.”
Churchill’s People (1975)
What’s it about? A TV series: “A historical anthology series based on ‘A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,’ Winston Churchill’s four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies.”
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Redcoat”
Victorian Scandals: Skittles (1976)
What’s it about? A TV series about different Victorian-era scandals, this one about famed courtesan Catherine “Skittles” Walters.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Tom Grenville”
The Duchess of Duke Street (1977)
What’s it about? An Edwardian cook becomes chef to the king.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Claud Turner-Rumbold”
BBC Play of the Month: Kean (1978)
What’s it about? “The great actor Edmund Kean is involved in a variety of romantic and other entanglements and wonders where acting ends and real life begins” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Lord Neville”
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-80)
What’s it about? The famous fictional Victorian detective.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Peter Clifford” (episode: A Motive for Murder), “Chapman” (episode: A Case of High Security); “The Case of the Other Ghost” based on a story by Fellowes
The Bunker (1981)
What’s it about? “Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler’s (Sir Anthony Hopkins’) last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Col. von Below”
Peter and Paul (1981)
What’s it about? The Biblical characters.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “[Emperor] Nero”
Priest of Love (1981)
What’s it about? Writer D.H. Lawrence.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Barbara’s Fiancé”
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)
What’s it about? A foppy English aristocrat is actually a spy in Revolutionary Paris.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Prince Regent”
Brief Interlude: Hollywood
“In the early 1980s, [Fellowes] decided to abandon the struggle and head for Hollywood. His thinking seems to have been that plummy-voiced English actors would always enjoy a certain cachet, and he wouldn’t have to put up with agitprop lecturing and backstage whip-rounds for striking layabouts. But although he landed a small role as Lynda Carter’s chauffeur in Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess, after two years, lonely and disillusioned, he returned home” (The once-broke ‘Downton Abbey’ writer who riles his Left-wing critics)
Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess (1983)
What’s it about? Biopic about actress Rita Hayworth.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Aly Khan’s Chauffeur”
Back to England: Still Acting
Swallows and Amazons Forever!: Coot Club (1984)
What’s it about? Based on a series of childrens’ books.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Nigel Jenkins”
Florence Nightingale (1985)
What’s it about? Biopic about the 19th century nurse.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Charles Bracebrige”
Seal Morning (1986)
What’s it about? “An orphaned girl and her lonely aunt living in 1930s England attract the attention of a handsome naturalist when they decide to raise an abandoned seal” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Vicar”
Lord Elgin & Some Stones of No Value (1986)
What’s it about? “By using Lord Elgin’s actual letters written when he was Ambassador in Constantinople in 1802 the film analyses how and why he took the majority of the sculptures from the Parthenon Temple in Athens and shipped them back to England” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Rev. Philip Hunt / Richard”
Sophia & Constance (1988)
What’s it about? “Drama based on The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett about two sisters whose paths in life differ widely” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Chirac”
Second Era: Writing & Acting
Little Sir Nicholas (1990)
What’s it about? “Based on the novel by CA Jones, ‘Little Sir Nicholas’ is a story set in the Victorian era about heritage, identity and family rivalries” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Apted”; writer
Screen Two: Fellow Traveller (1991)
What’s it about? “1950s Hollywood: the McCarthy senate committee is conducting a witch-hunt for supposed communists in the entertainment industry and betrayal is in the air. For three friends this proves to be a disaster – for the writer who must work incognito for the emerging ITV in England; for the musician now living in England, a painful renewal of old wounds; and for the star a final performance” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “D’Arcy”
The Treaty (1991)
What’s it about? “In 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty between the unrecognised Irish Republic and the British government is concluded after high-stakes negotiations.”
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Winston Churchill”
Covington Cross (1992)
What’s it about? “In England in the 14th Century, the Grey family, the widowed Sir Thomas Grey and his children, deal with issues such as romance, political intrigue and war” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Bishop Moore”
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992)
What’s it about? “The adventures of the archaeological treasure hunter in his youth as related by an elderly Indiana Jones” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Winston Churchill”
Sharpe’s Rifles (1993)
What’s it about? “In the Peninsular War, a British sergeant is field promoted to a lieutenant in charge of a disrespectful rifle company” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Major Dunnett”
Shadowlands (1993)
“Fellowes was determined to make it, ‘and I kept working and turning up in things,’ playing any number of bishops, nobs, politicians, dons and army officers on stage and in films such as Shadowlands and the James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies” (An Interview with Julian Fellowes).
What’s it about? Biopic about writer C.S. Lewis.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Desmond Arding”
Martin Chuzzlewit (1994)
What’s it about? Dickens story adaptation.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Dr. Jobling”
Second Era: Writing & Acting
“‘But even if you’re a busy actor,’ he [Fellowes] continues, ‘you feel underused all the time.’ Which was why in the early Nineties he started to make family serials for the BBC, working with the director Andrew Morgan. The first, Little Lord Nicholas, sold around the world and was followed by Little Lord Fauntleroy – which went big in America, winning an international Emmy and a Canadian Bamf – then The Prince and the Pauper” (An Interview with Julian Fellowes).
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1995)
“It may revive interest in the Fauntelroy look. Mr Fellowes would not object. He despairs, he says, of the way children dress today in their trainers and tracksuits ‘that look as attractive as a custard pie in the face,; and wonders if the current tide of BBC costume dramas might remind people of clothes that did not look like sacks” (Little Lord Fauntleroy: he’s back and not just on the telly).
What’s it about? “An American boy turns out to be the long-lost heir of a British fortune” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Wuden”; writer (adapted by)
Sharpe’s Regiment (1996)
What’s it about? More Peninsular War stuff!
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Prince Regent”
Jane Eyre (1996)
What’s it about? The 1840s novel about a poor governess who gets gothic…
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Colonel Dent”
The Prince and the Pauper (1996)
What’s it about? An adaptation of Mark Twain’s story about the future King Edward VI.
What was Fellowes’ role? Producer; writer (adaptation)
Behind the Lines (1997)
What’s it about? “Soldiers of World War One sent to an asylum for emotional troubles” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Timmons”
Aristocrats (1999)
Fellowes on wearing high heels for the role: “I look at my wife walking around on six inches of spike and wonder how she does it. I’ve only got the shoes of a geography mistress here, and the fact is I can hardly hobble home at the end of the working day” (Wealthy Toils, The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, July 17, 2001).
What’s it about? Four real-life daughters of the Lennox family, who are leading British aristocrats.
What was Fellowes’ role? Actor: “Duke of Richmond”
Third Era: Go-To Upper-Class Writer
“In 1998, Anna Home, his champion at the BBC, was replaced by Lorraine Heggessey. ‘And I was out on my ear. It was the luckiest thing that could have happened because I started writing feature films,’ Fellowes explains” (An Interview with Julian Fellowes)
“His first 12 screenplays were rejected, and he struggled by doing sitcoms and a little acting, until, in the late 1990s, he was approached by the Hollywood director Robert Altman, who was toying with the idea of an English upper-class drama. Fellowes’s brief was to produce a story ‘set in a country house in the 1930s, and to have a murder in there somewhere, but for it to really be an examination of class.’ The result was Gosford Park, and its global success – $87 million grossed – catapulted the writer to unforseeable stardom” (The once-broke ‘Downton Abbey’ writer who riles his Left-wing critics).
“It was my lucky break because I know how country houses work and the upper classes speak. I was sure it wouldn’t happen but I thought I’d see how far it would go” (An Interview with Julian Fellowes).
Gosford Park (2001)
“Most critics agree that Gosford Park is a biting attack on the aristocracy – and it is evident that its barbs are all the sharper thanks to Fellowes’s intimacy with his subject. It’s this ambivalence that saves the movie from being yet another high-production costume drama”; according to Fellowes, the film is,
“a social examination of the class system, the games that it involved people in and the amount of collusion that it required between the classes. One of the points I hope the film makes is that it isn’t enough to have that kind of Channel 4 assumption that everyone upstairs was ghastly and living the life of Riley while everyone downstairs had a foot on their neck. That’s a very babyish attitude. The class system wouldn’t have lasted hundreds of years if that were the truth” (How does a Hollywood director get under the skin of the British ruling class?)
What’s it about? A murder happens during a country house weekend party in the 1930s.
What was Fellowes’ role? Associate producer; writer
Vanity Fair (2004)
Director Mira Nair: “Basically I said I wanted to work with one person, Julian Fellowes, because I loved his dialogue in Gosford Park. I met him and found in him another helpless fan of Thackeray. He knew this book as well if not better than I did. And because we both knew the book, we could cut right to the heart of the matter” (Peter Howell, Tickling Brit vanities, Toronto Star, Aug. 27, 2004).
What’s it about? In the 1810s, a poor girl climbs the social ladder.
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer (screenplay)
Piccadilly Jim (2004)
What’s it about? “Set in the 1930s, an American with a scandalous reputation on both sides of the Atlantic must do an about-face in order to win back the woman of his dreams” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer (screenplay)
Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder (2004-05)
What’s it about? “Dramatised accounts of five unsolved murders from British history” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Presenter; writer
The Young Victoria (2009)
What’s it about? The early reign of Queen Victoria.
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer
From Time to Time (2009)
What’s it about? “When 13-year-old Tolly finds he can mysteriously travel between the two, he begins an adventure that unlocks family secrets laid buried for generations” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Director, producer, writer (adaptation)
Fourth Era: Superstar Writer/Producer
Downton Abbey (2010-15)
“I’m seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don’t think is unfair. It is a whole side of the society here that I find quite intriguing, and happily the audience has come along with me. I think one of the things we got right with ‘Downton’ was that we treat the characters of the servants and the family exactly the same. Some of them are nice, some of them are not nice, some of them are funny, some of them are not, but there is no division between the servants and the family to mark that” (Behind the Scenes With the Creator of ‘Downton Abbey’).
“I saw the dying fall of it [the country house] in the 50s, as a child. My great-aunt is the original Lady Grantham [Maggie Smith’s character in Downton]. She was born in 1880, and she only died when I was 21, so I knew her. She was presented in 1898. No one under 45 has got that now” (Julian Fellowes: captain invincible).
What’s it about? “A chronicle of the lives of the British aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the early twentieth century” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Executive producer, producer, writer (written and created by)
Titanic (2012)
Fellowes said that in most films about the Titanic,
“We never see the middle class; and England is a middle-class nation. It’s what most of us are. It’s what most of our greatness depends upon. So, in our Titanic, we have a very strong middle-class story. We quite deliberately set out to create a portrait of the ship. A Night to Remember [the 1958 film based on Walter Lord’s classic book of the same name] is essentially the story of the officers. The Cameron movie is mostly a love story. Nobody has attempted – I used the word advisedly – to convey a sense of the whole life of the ship. We have 18 characters, and it’s a plaited narrative. We sink the ship three times, so you see the thing from several perspectives” (Julian Fellowes: captain invincible).
What’s it about? The famous ship that sank in 1912.
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer (written by)
Romeo & Juliet (2013)
What’s it about? An adaptation of the Shakespeare play about doomed young lovers.
What was Fellowes’ role? Producer
Doctor Thorne (2016)
What’s it about? “The life of penniless Mary Thorne, who grows up with her Uncle, Dr Thorne, and her relationship with the family at nearby Greshamsbury Park estate” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Executive producer; writer (screenplay)
Crooked House (2017)
What’s it about? A 1950s-set Agatha Christie murder mystery.
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer (screenplay)
The Chaperone (2018)
Star Elizabeth McGovern: “I was a fan of the book and I was hired to do the audio book, and while I’m reading it, I’m thinking ‘This has to be a movie’. So that was the light-bulb moment. I was working with Julian at the time and he agreed with me. He wanted to tackle the screenplay. So that’s how it all got going. We hadn’t planned to work together. Our association went on for so long on Downton because the show went for so long. He wrote, I acted and that was it, but there was mutual respect there. I had to get the courage up to alter our dynamic to get him to work on The Chaperone. When I would get drafts, I’d give him feedback as a producer, which is something I wasn’t used to, but he was so open and receptive that I loved that whole experience” (Darren Hallesy, McGovern’s Passion Topic, Sunshine Coast Daily, April 25, 2019).
What’s it about? “In the early 1920s, a Kansas woman finds her life forever changed when she accompanies a young dancer on her fame-seeking journey to New York City” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Writer (screenplay by)
Downton Abbey (2019)
“There’s a sort of calmness in the Downton world. They go up and get dressed for dinner and they come down and they’re all polite to each other and everything. It does seem like a nice oasis away from the kind of strange, relentless anger that is spewing forth on every side at the moment in our real lives” (Why We Need the ‘Downton Abbey’ Movie, an ‘Oasis’ From the ‘Relentless Anger’ of Life).
What’s it about? The first feature film based on the TV series.
What was Fellowes’ role? Producer; writer (screenplay)
The English Game (2020)
What’s it about? “The story of the invention of football and how it quickly rose to become the world’s most popular game by crossing class divides” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Executive producer; writer (written by)
Belgravia (2020)
“I am always interested in periods of great social mobility when things were changing. The years after the Battle of Waterloo leading to the beginning of Victoria’s reign were a time of tremendous change. The expansion of the British empire, the increase of certain industries, the beginning of empire trading and mill workers were suddenly expanding… It is also the period when the railway was beginning and railways were making everything much more accessible, so the whole country was in a state of flux. And really, in essence, that is what the story of Belgravia is about – that and the characters within that context” (Prepare for secrets and scandals in Julian Fellowes’ new TV drama).
What’s it about? “Follows events when the emerging nouveau riche, including the Trenchard family, rub shoulders with London’s established upper classes and when secrets from the past threaten to emerge” (IMDB).
What was Fellowes’ role? Executive producer; writer (adapted from novel by)
The Gilded Age (2022)
[Director Michael] Engler acknowledged that Fellowes’ writing voice is ‘unique’ and ‘distinct,’ so of course there is a shared ‘intelligence’ in the ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘The Gilded Age’ characters from all walks of life. ‘The least educated people, in their own way, are incredibly articulate. They’re witty in their own way,’ Engler said, continuing, ‘There’s this funny balance between comedy and drama, even within certain scenes. Some are very comic, some are very dramatic, and some have this interesting mix'” (‘The Gilded Age’ director discusses the critical difference between the new Julian Fellowes series and ‘Downton Abbey’).
What’s it about? Old and new money clash in 1870s New York City.
What was Fellowes’ role? Executive producer; writer (written by)
Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)
What’s it about? Another feature film!
What was Fellowes’ role? Producer; writer (screenplay)
In Production: The Wind in the Willows
What’s it about?
What is Fellowes’ role? Writer (screenplay)
What’s your favorite of Julian Fellowes’ films?
Ooh, do I have a grudge against “From Time to Time”. Based on two of the fabulous “Green Knowe” books, it commits one of the worst sins of all. It’s BORING. Seriously, ghosts and architecture and curses and history and you make it BORING? Grrrrrrr…. waste of a cast.
It’s a crime to mess with that book!
Yes, that sounds like my platonic ideal of a story! Guess I should read the books!
Yes, that film was dreadful! and if you’re thinking of starting the books, the first one, The Children of Green Knowe, is a good December read.
I’m with you Gwyn. I love the books – still have a couple from childhood. A great cast was wasted on something that could have been so much more. PS. there’s an episode of Antiques Road Trip that includes a visit to Lucy Boston’s home – the inspiration for the books. Its story is fascinating in its own right, and her dtr in law, who still lives there, shows us around.
Gosford Park is by far my favourite, I watched it ten times!
Its Downton playing nasty
I love Aristocrats and never realized he was in it. He was fairly OTT as the Duke but not in a bad way. Love Gosford Park as well.
I actually kind of enjoyed him as Prinny in Pimpernel. I tend to grit my teeth when I see he’s involved in things (he’s such a Tory), but I’ve enjoyed some of them.
At this point, I find Julian Fellowes’ involvement in a work to be a turn off. One work after another about the 1% makes him feel like a one trick pony.
It does feel like his ability to capture the class system is diminishing, right? Gosford Park is still so great, Downton was very good, Doctor Thorne sounds terrible, Belgravia and Gilded Age are ho hum…
I think that, contrary to Gosford Park, and now he has become really bankable his last productions downton included are aiming at a large family target and end to be very consensual and sadly not really realistic (=> upper class dreamland)
Yeah, his politics leave a LOT to be desired.
Why we love Julian Fellowes…Gosford Park…costume dramas!
I like his style, particularly in Downton Abbey and Crooked House. But my real favourite is Gosford Park. I don’t know why it’s so underrated and underwatched. Outside of costume-fans I rarely hear it discussed, and it really should! It’s brilliant!
Fellows was in Covington Cross? You asonish me!
His episode of Young Indiana Jones is the one with the suffragette in London during WWI and it’s my favorite episode from that series. I rewatched it recently and Fellows as Churchill gets told off in a very satisfactory fashion by the heroine.
I loved Gosford Park, but then I watched The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir’s masterpiece from about 1939) and realized how much was lifted from that older, better work. There’s one scene in particular, where the servants are eating downstairs and discussing their employers, that is a verbatim translation of the same scene in French.
Ditto Downton Abbey (ripping off Upstairs Downstairs) and Gilded Age (everything by Edith Wharton).
Julian Fellowes Investigates is unintentionally hilarious. You’ve got a perfectly normal little poisoning or stabbing, and up pops Fellowes to ‘splain what you’ve just seen on screen with over-the-top language like “VIOLENT DEATH” and “ARSENIC.”
My favorite role of his is not a frock flick, it’s Kilwillie, Richard Briers’ wacky neighbor in the early oughts Scottish soap Monarch of the Glen. Every episode was son and laird Archie MacDonald trying to save the estate from financial ruin while Richard and Julian dashed about the countryside filching barrels of whiskey or tossing cabers.
The best comment on the man was a critic greeting the arrival of a new project with: “Julian Fellows has been typing again.”
I didn’t realize that was Julian Fellowes as Churchill in The Young Indiana Chronicles – that was a formative show for me and for a long time that face was Churchill for me. How weird.