Julian Fellowes
Julian Fellowes
Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford and Deputy Lieutenant,is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, and a Conservative peer of the House of Lords. Fellowes is primarily known as the author of several Sunday Times best-seller novels; for the screenplay for the film Gosford Park, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2002; and as the creator, writer and executive producer of the multiple award-winning British television series Downton Abbey...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth7 August 1949
CityCairo, Egypt
I can be as contrary as I choose.
If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.
In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.
One of the great injustices in fiction is that on the whole people with romantic yearnings have romantic faces. But in real life it's not always like that.
Tom and I wanted to make this film before I won the Oscar, but I couldn't get the backing to set it up, and he wasn't considered big enough to play the lead,
What the Americans want to see is life in their drama. Life of all sorts: hard lives, easy lives, or lives which, like most of ours, are a mixture of the two.
To be honest, when you're running a series and you have an open end, you don't want to limit yourself too much with the choices you've got for a particular character.
What a difference a day makes, ... The Oscar gave me all these opportunities. It's a magic wand.
I like to take a long time over breakfast, and I can't bear to talk. If a guest is a breakfast talker it's very important to invite another so they can talk to each other. Otherwise they spoil the newspaper reading and everything else.
What I dislike about movie culture is that it often presents a parable of our problems - but the issues are all straightforward and the people are either nice or they're not. In real life, everyone falls between those perimeters, but not many American films operate in that grey area.
Well, you've got to be known for something. The danger of extreme versatility is that you don't spring to mind for anything.
When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you've got to have a gut understanding of your material.
There isn't much point in the whole 'celebrity' nonsense unless one is prepared to go out on a limb and, one hopes, speak up for some under-represented section of the community.
There are some men who are frightened by strong women and some men who are nurtured by them and feel nervous, with weak clinging vines. And I am very much of the latter category.