William Ivory
British screenwriter and actor

William (Billy) Ivory (born 1964) is a British screenwriter, playwright and actor. He is a three-time BAFTA nominee.
Early life and career
Ivory was born in Southwell, Nottinghamshire and has set many of his works in Nottingham.
He was a pupil at the Minster School in Southwell. He dropped out of his English degree at the University of London after three weeks, going on to work as a binman for nearly three years, writing in his spare time. After he broke his arm, he wanted a less arduous job and so applied to be a stagehand at the Nottingham Playhouse, eventually acting there. He went on to play several roles in television adverts and drama series. Ivory's first television writing credit was Journey to Knock, in 1991, and he has since created and written many television dramas. Ivory's first stage play, The Retirement of Tom Stevens, was produced in 2006. He wrote the screenplay for Made in Dagenham (2010), and for the 2023 film starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, The Great Escaper.
“William Ivory” enters the record as british screenwriter and actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Ivory and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112465547. VIAF identifies the subject as 266989381. The Library of Congress control number is no2011049287. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1991, 2006 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Ivory” 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.