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
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.
I think the reason why people love 'Downton Abbey' is because all the characters are given the same weight. Some are nice, some are not, but it has nothing to do with class or oppressors versus the oppressed.
I like people who don't accept boundaries. Like Florence Nightingale. And Napoleon or Louis XIV, though I'm not sure how much I'd have liked to meet them. I admire people who aren't circumscribed by circumstance.
The great houses of Britain have, for centuries, been the guardians of much of our history, not just of the families who built and lived in them, but of the people who worked there, of the local area, of all of us.
In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.
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?
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.
No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.
My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.
I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.
I envy people who can think, 'No, I'm not going to work today' when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.
People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.