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
Most of us don't want to be outsiders.
In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.
School visits are something I do fairly often: I always say to the students that somebody has got to end up with the interesting careers, so why not them?
Today, people often make the American mistake of confusing acquaintances with friends. The former are there to share life's pleasures; only the latter should be invited to share one's problems.
I think other people's depression is frightfully dreary, don't you?
There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.
We live a life that is often spent in crowds - parties, festivals and first nights - so it's nice to avoid them.
I can be as contrary as I choose.
I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.
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.
We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.
Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.