Chris Ellison (actor)
English actor
Christopher Michael Ellison (born 16 December 1946 in St Pancras, London) is a British actor from London. He is best known for his role as DI (later DCI) Frank Burnside in the ITV police series The Bill (1984–2000), and short-lived spin-off series Burnside (2000).
Education
At school his art teacher encouraged him having seen his talent. Art remained his strong subject throughout his school years, and it was a natural progression that Ellison then moved on to art college, firstly at Wimbledon and then Camberwell.
Career
He served in the Merchant Navy, trained as a graphic designer and worked as a minicab driver. His first drama job was assistant stage manager at the Richmond Theatre. His first acting role was in the play Woman in a Dressing Gown at said theatre. His first major guest role was an appearance in The Sweeney (1975).
He appeared in many guest roles in TV shows throughout the 1970s, including episodes of The Professionals, Dempsey and Makepeace and Bergerac, and in the films Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse (1978), Lady Oscar (1979), Minder (1982), Brush Strokes (1986) and Buster (1988), based on the Great Train Robbery of 1963. In 1981, he had a notable role as bent DI in the ITV crime mini-series Wolcott, a performance with marked similarities to his later work in The Bill.
“Chris Ellison (actor)” enters the record as english actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chris, Ellison and actor can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Chris Ellison (actor)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chris, Ellison and actor provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5112273. VIAF identifies the subject as 39171764. The Library of Congress control number is no2007152023. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1984, 2000 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chris Ellison (actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.