My schooldays

Published on 25/06/2003 01:00

As an actor, Julian Fellowes has played Lord Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen on TV, and appeared in the films Damage, Shadowlands and Tomorrow Never Dies. As a writer, he won an Oscar for best original screenplay for Gosford Park. He has written a new version of Vanity Fair which is currently filming.

WHERE did you go to school?

I was one of the first children at Wetherby School, in London, so called because it was then situated in Wetherby Place where we lived. Later, it rose to dizzy heights with princely pupils, et alia, but its allure for my mother was that it was just over the road. From there, I progressed to St Philip’s, also in Wetherby Place. You would think we were always on time, living less than five minutes from both these establishments but in fact we were invariably late and eventually caned for same.

After that, I went through the whole Ampleforth College experience: Gilling Castle, then Junior House (in these days one goes to one or the other, but then it was both) and finally the college itself which I left at 17.

Did you like it?

Not much. I wasn’t a natural for school although I only experienced one really horrible, sadistic teacher. He was one of the senior masters at Gilling Castle when I was there. When I look back, I am amazed that the authorities should have left such a vile person in charge of young children and it still makes me angry that they did so. Apart from that, it wasn’t so much that I was badly treated but more that I was just unsuited to school life. I didn’t care who won the cup. I wanted to be at a dinner party somewhere near the King’s Road.

Did you get into trouble?

When I was 11, I ran away with a fellow schoolmate, called Peter Collingridge, who is now something frightfully grand at Christie’s. We managed to get to Grantham where the police caught us and sent us home in the guards’ van. Peter wanted to go to Paris and join the White Russians in their struggle for the Romanovs. I wanted to go to my Granny’s and have something decent to eat. We did get into quite a lot of trouble when we got back.

Apart from that, I was always nearly in trouble, but not quite. When I was in the sixth form, I used to keep an open bottle of white wine in my room with a plastic daffodil in it. My house master sensed that subversion was in the air but found it hard to pin anything on me.

What subjects were you good at?

I was good at school work because I was clever, which was my defence. I was never bullied because I used to make the others laugh at the bullies and that put them off. I passed my ‘O’ levels at 13 and my first ‘A’ levels at 15 with three A grades. English and history were my best subjects. I never could make head or tail of science but generally I was pretty competent.

Did you have a favourite teacher?

I quite liked a few of them. We had a rather racy and glamorous history teacher called Stephen Damman whom I admired tremendously, but he suddenly (and even today I do not know why) took a passionate dislike to me so that rather brought my hero-worship to an end. The only one to influence my life was Father Dominic Milroy, who was the first person to point me towards the theatre as a possible profession. This was revolutionary at that time when one was basically expected to be a soldier, a farmer, a banker or a diplomat and I will always be grateful to him. He came on This Is Your Life after the Oscar which was fun as I hadn’t seen him to thank him for many years.

What did you want to do?

I was thinking about acting before I got to university but it was there that it solidified as an ambition, although it was always film rather than stage that interested me. British drama schools still teach as if the stage were ALL and film work is a tiresome necessity for paying the VAT, but it wasn’t true then and it is even less true today.

College or university?

I went to Magdalen College, Cambridge, and after that to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art so I wasn’t working for my living until I got a job at Frinton Rep; thanks to a sister-in-law pulling strings.

What do you wish you had learned at school but were not taught?

I wish we had been taught a little about the mechanics of being a grown-up, paying tax, dealing with local authorities. Not a lot, just a little. But the real gap in my education was not a failing of my school, but of my period. The 1960s pretended that everyone had years and years to decide what to do with their lives and they should go off round the world and find themselves and all that. As a result, an enormous number came to their chosen professions too late to make a mark in them. You still see them wandering around Chelsea in leather jackets with long, thinning hair, casualties of the lie that there was plenty of time.

What is the single most important lesson you have learned outside of formal education?

That the key ingredient of success is persistence. And luck, of course. I am happy to help people these days, if I can, but I try to help only those who are persistent and determined. I know the others will not make it no matter how much help they are given.

As an actor, Julian Fellowes has played Lord Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen on TV, and appeared in the films Damage, Shadowlands and Tomorrow Never Dies. As a writer, he won an Oscar for best original screenplay for Gosford Park. He has written a new version of Vanity Fair which is currently filming.