James Ellis (actor)
British actor (1931-2014)
James Ellis (15 March 1931 – 8 March 2014) was a Northern Irish actor and theatre director from Belfast who had a career stretching over sixty years. Originally a stage actor and director in his native city, he moved to London in the early 1960s. After gaining recognition in Great Britain through the Z-Cars (1962–78) police series on BBC1, he appeared in many other television and film roles. He was also a translator.
Early life
Jimmy Ellis was born in Belfast where he attended Methodist College. He later studied at Queen's University Belfast and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Career
Ellis began to act with the Belfast-based Ulster Group Theatre in 1952. He first appeared in a revival of the Louis D'Alton play They Got What They Wanted (1947). Ellis became established as the company's young male lead in such plays as April in Assagh, where he was cast as McFettridge (1954), Is the Priest at Home? as O'Grady (1954), and The Diary of Anne Frank as Peter van Daan (1957).
“James Ellis (actor)” enters the record as british actor (1931-2014). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Ellis and actor can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6133435. VIAF identifies the subject as 268462530. The Library of Congress control number is n00021413. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2014, 1962 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Ellis (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.