Julian Fellowes

Julian Fellowes (born August 17, 1949, Cairo, Egypt) is a British actor, producer, novelist, and screenwriter best known for creating the television series Downton Abbey (2010–15).

Fellowes was born in Egypt, where his father was with the British embassy. While attending Magdalene College, Cambridge, he joined the Footlights comedy group. He then studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he played character roles in scores of television series and movies; he later had a recurring role on BBC TV’s Monarch of the Glen (2000–05). He struggled to avoid typecasting, however, and in the 1990s he began to write TV adaptations of novels, notably Little Sir Nicholas (1990), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1995), and The Prince and the Pauper (1996).

Fellowes’s breakthrough came with his first produced screenplay, Gosford Park (2001). It earned him several honours, including an Academy Award for best original screenplay. He later wrote scripts for Vanity Fair (2004); Separate Lies (2005), which he also directed; The Young Victoria (2009); The Tourist (2010); Romeo and Juliet (2013); and The Chaperone (2018). He also published the novels Snobs (2004) and Past Imperfect (2008) and publicly acknowledged that he had written “bodice-ripping” romance novels under pseudonyms, notably Rebecca Greville and Alexander Merrant. His interactive narrative Belgravia (2016) is a serialized novel initially released as a mobile-phone or tablet app containing both text and audiobook versions of the story. Set in 1840s London, the plot hinges on the British class conflicts of the period.

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In 2010 Fellowes created and produced Downton Abbey, which began following the fortunes of more than a dozen major characters, from the earl and countess of Grantham down to the scullery maid, in the pre-World War I period. Although the costume drama, which debuted on Britain’s ITV television, was dismissed by some as well-dressed soap opera, the calibre of writing and acting captured the public imagination and numerous awards. In 2011 the show received an Emmy for best drama series, and Fellowes received an Emmy for his writing. Downton Abbey ended in 2015, but he later penned the screenplays for two feature films (2019 and 2022) that follow the characters in the ensuing years.

Fellowes continued to work on other projects. In 2012 he penned the script for the TV miniseries Titanic. He also wrote the book for the stage musical School of Rock (2015), which was adapted from Richard Linklater’s film of the same name, and wrote and produced a 2016 television adaptation of the Anthony Trollope novel Doctor Thorne (1858). In 2020 Fellowes returned to TV with the limited series Belgravia, which he adapted from his serialized novel of the same name. Two years later The Gilded Age debuted on HBO. The TV show, which was set in the late 19th century and centred on New York high society, was cocreated and cowritten by Fellowes.

He was granted a Tory life peerage in 2011.