Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL (born 17 August 1949), known professionally as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, as well as a Conservative member of the House of Lords.
Early life and education
Fellowes was born in Cairo, Egypt, the youngest son of Peregrine Edward Launcelot Fellowes and Olwen née Stuart-Jones. His father was a diplomat and Arabist who campaigned to have Haile Selassie restored to his throne during World War II. He has three older brothers: Nicholas, wordsmith David, and playwright Rory.
His childhood home was in Wetherby Place, South Kensington, and afterwards at Chiddingly in East Sussex, where he lived from August 1959 until November 1988 and where his parents are buried. The house in Chiddingly, which had been owned by a whodunnit writer called Clifford Kitchin was within reach of London where his father, who had been a diplomat, worked for Shell. Fellowes has described his father as one "of that last generation of men who lived in a pat of butter without knowing it. My mother put him on a train on Monday mornings and drove up to London in the afternoon. At the flat she'd be waiting in a snappy little cocktail dress with a delicious dinner and drink. Lovely, really." A decided influence to arise from this place was the friendship that developed with another family in the village â€" the Kingsleys. David Kingsley was head of British Lion Films, the company responsible for many Peter Sellers comedies. Sometimes "glamorous figures" would visit the Kingsleys' house. Fellowes has said that he thinks he "learnt from David Kingsley that you could actually make a living in the film business."
Fellowes was educated at several private schools in Britain: first at Wetherby School (Wetherby Place, South Kensington, London), then at St. Philip's, a Roman Catholic pre-preparatory school, also in Wetherby Place - (Fellowes is 'a cradle Catholic') - and finally at the Catholic public school Ampleforth College. He read English Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating with the degree of MA, and where he was a member of Footlights. He studied further at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art (London).
Career
Television
Fellowes moved to Los Angeles in 1981 and played a number of small TV roles for the next two years. He believed his breakthrough had come when he was considered to replace Hervé Villechaize as the butler on the TV series Fantasy Island, but the role was given to the much older British actor Christopher Hewett.
After returning to Britain, Fellowes played the part of Kilwillie in the television series Monarch of the Glen. Other notable acting roles included the part of "Claud Seabrook" in the acclaimed 1996 BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North and the "2nd Duke of Richmond" in the BBC drama serial Aristocrats.
In 1991, he played Neville Marsham in For the Greater Good, again for the BBC, directed by Danny Boyle. He portrayed George IV as the Prince Regent for the second time (the first was in the 1982 film The Scarlet Pimpernel) in the 1996 adaptation of Bernard Cornwell's novel Sharpe's Regiment & Major Dunnett in Sharpe's Rifles. He launched a new series on BBC One in 2004, Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder, which he wrote and introduced onscreen. He was the presenter of Never Mind the Full Stops, a panel-based gameshow broadcast on BBC Four from 2006 to 2007. He created the hugely successful and critically acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey for ITV1 in 2010. He also wrote a new Titanic mini-series that was shown on ITV1 in March/April 2012.
Films
Fellowes wrote the script for Gosford Park, which won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen in 2002. In late 2005, Fellowes made his directorial début with the film Separate Lies, for which he won the award for Best Directorial Début from the National Board of Review. In 2009, Momentum Pictures and Sony Pictures released The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt, for which Fellowes wrote the original screenplay. Other screenwriting credits include Vanity Fair, The Tourist and From Time to Time, which he also directed, and which won Best Picture at the Chicago Children's Film Festival, the Youth Jury Award at the Seattle International Film Festival, Best Picture at the Fiuggi Family Festival in Rome and the Young Jury Award at Cinemagic in Belfast. His greatest commercial success was The Tourist, which grossed US$278 million worldwide, and for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher McQuarrie and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Other films Fellowes has appeared in include Full Circle (1977), Priest of Love (1981), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985), Damage (1992), Shadowlands (1993), Jane Eyre (1996), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Regeneration (1997) and Place Vendôme (1998). He has continued his acting career while writing; for example, he unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Master of Lake-town in the 2012-2014 The Hobbit series.
Novels
Fellowes' novel Snobs was published in 2004. It focused on the social nuances of the upper class and concerned the marriage of an upper middle class girl to a peer. Snobs was a Sunday Times best seller. In 2009 he published the novel, Past Imperfect, also a Sunday Times best seller. It deals with the Débutante Season of 1968, comparing the world then to the world of 2008. He also wrote, under the pseudonym Rebecca Greville, several romantic novels in the 1970s.
Theatre
As an actor, Fellowes appeared in several West End productions, including Samuel Taylor's A Touch of Spring, Alan Ayckbourn's Joking Apart and a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter. As a writer, Fellowes penned the script to the West End musical Mary Poppins, produced by Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Disney, which opened on Broadway in December 2006. In December 2014, it was revealed his next project would be writing the book for Broadway bound musical School of Rock.
Writing credits
Parliament
On 13 January 2011, Fellowes was elevated to the Peerage by being created Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, of West Stafford in the County of Dorset, and was introduced in the House of Lords on that same day, where he sits on the Conservative benches.
Fellowes' other interests
Fellowes is the Chairman of the RNIB appeal for Talking Books. He is a Vice-President of the Weldmar Hospicecare Trust, Patron of the South West branch of Age UK, Patron of Changing Faces, of Living Paintings, of the Rainbow Trust, and of Breast Cancer Haven, as well as supporting charities concerned with the care of those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and other causes. He recently opened the Dorset office of south-west adoption charity, Families for Children. He also sits on the Arts and Media Honours Committee.
Fellowes is on the Appeal Council for the National Memorial Arboretum and he is also the Patron of Moviola, an initiative to facilitate rural cinema screenings in the West Country.
Controversy
In March 1981, Fellowes wrote to the Times newspaper in indignation at the MP Geoffrey Dickens's taunting of his fellow Parliamentarians about the identity of a paedophile whose name he was about to reveal. This turned out to be Sir Peter Hayman, whom Fellowes did not know but who had recently been arrested for owning a large amount of paedophile pornography. In the version of the letter that was published in the Times, Fellowes said: "The feeblest student of human nature must surely be aware of how slight the connexion between pornography and practices need be. To flirt with fetishes is hardly rare in the best circles . . . now he has to have his life, public and private, more thoroughly smashed than if he had murdered his kinsman in broad daylight." Fellowes later maintained that this had not been a defence of Hayman, who was a stranger to him, so much as an attack on Dickens and his disgusting enjoyment of his own power to reveal under Parliamentary Privilege.
Family
On 28 April 1990, Fellowes married Emma Joy Kitchener LVO (born 1963; a Lady-in-Waiting to HRH Princess Michael of Kent), the great-grandniece of Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener. Fellowes has publicly expressed his dissatisfaction that the proposals to change the rules of royal succession were not extended to peerages, which would have allowed his wife to succeed as 4th Countess Kitchener; instead, the title became extinct on her uncle's death because of the lack of male heirs. On 9 May 2012 The Queen issued a Royal Warrant of Precedence granting The Lady Fellowes of West Stafford the same rank and title as a daughter of an Earl, as if her late father had survived his brother and therefore succeeded to the title.
They have one son, The Hon Peregrine Charles Morant Kitchener-Fellowes (born 1991). The family resides in Dorset and on 15 October 1998 they changed their surname from Fellowes to Kitchener-Fellowes.
Fellowes was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of Dorset in 2009. He is also lord of the manor of Tattershall in Lincolnshire and President of the Society of Dorset Men.
His wife, Lady Fellowes of West Stafford, is story editor for Downton Abbey and works with charities.
He and Robert Fellowes, Baron Fellowes have a common ancestor named William Fellowes, who lived in 1653.
Arms
Styles and titles
- Julian Fellowes Esq (1949â€"1998)
- Julian Kitchener-Fellowes Esq (1998â€"2009)
- Julian Kitchener-Fellowes Esq DL (2009â€"2011)
- The Rt Hon The Lord Fellowes of West Stafford DL (2011â€"present)
