James Ellis
Birthday: Born in 1931-03-15 in Belfast, Ireland
Deathday: 2014-03-08
Legendary Northern Irish actor who came to prominence in the 1960s for his role of Bert Lynch in the BBC TV series Z Cars.
TV Credits
Softly, Softly
Character:
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England....
Doctor Who
Character: Peter Warmsly
The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs....
The Bill
Character:
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters....
In Sickness and in Health
Character:
Sequel to 'Till Death Us Do Part' with the bad tempered Alf Garnett, who has not mellowed with the years and is as bigoted as ever....
Heartbeat
Character: Bagger / Winston Parker
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines....
The Scales of Justice
Character: Bill Kenton
Not strictly TV productions, "The Scales of Justice" were cinema second features produced for Anglo Amalgamated running around 30 minutes and followed the "Scotland Yard" series of shorts also introduced by Edgar Lustgarten. Production was sporadic (presumably filling gaps in the Edgar Wallace schedule), the first three released Nov-Dec 1962, a second batch of three released Sept/Oct 1963, two more in Feb 1965, one in Dec 1965 and a final batch (in colour) Sept 1966 to March 1967. The usual Mert...
Nightingales
Character: Sarge
Nightingales is a British situation comedy set around the antics of three security guards working the night shift. It was written by Paul Makin and produced by Alomo Productions for Channel 4 in 1990....
Lovejoy
Character: Niall Sheehan
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries....
All Creatures Great and Small
Character: Roddy Travers
All Creatures Great and Small is a British television series, based on the books of the British veterinary surgeon Alf Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot. Ninety episodes were aired over two three-year runs. The first run was based directly on Herriot's books; the second was filmed with original scripts....
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Character: Thin Man
The legendary character Robin Hood and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest and the surrounding vicinity. While some episodes dramatised the traditional Robin Hood tales, most episodes were original dramas created by the show's writers and producers....
Play for Today
Character:
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense
Character: Father Dowd
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was a short-lived anthology television series from Hammer Studios. Though similar in format to the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror, the Mystery and Suspense series had feature-length episodes, usually running around 70 minutes without commercials. The series was a co-production by Hammer Studios with 20th Century Fox Television, and is known in the United States as Fox Mystery Theater. Unlike 1980's Hammer House of Horror, all the episodes had American ac...
Wogan
Character: Self
Chat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities....
So You Think You've Got Troubles
Character: Charlie Adamson
Six-part comedy series about a Londoner, and non-practising Jew, is sent by his boss to Northern Ireland to run a tobacco company....
Big Bad World
Character:
...
Z-Cars
Character: PC Bert Lynch
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978....
The Marksman
Character: Doyle
Twelve-year-old Gordon Weaver is killed on waste-ground in Liverpool. His grandfather, Doyle, sends for the boy's father, who returns from Spain to search for the killers. He goes to an old friend to obtain finance for his stay, and gets involved in a raid on a city club owner....
Common As Muck
Character:
Common As Muck is a gritty BBC comedy drama serial focusing on the lives of a crew of bin men and their management staff. It ran for two series. The first series was screened in 1994 and the second in 1997. Both were nominated for a BAFTA for Best Drama....
The Detectives
Character: Customs Officer
The absurd adventures of two defective detectives, who - despite unbelievable incompetence - somehow manage to solve their cases (or be nearby when the cases are solved) and retain their jobs....
Casualty
Character: Reg
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives....
Boys from the Blackstuff
Character: Wino
Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers ...
The Gathering Seed
Character: Jim Larkin
The saga of Manchester lad Joe Henshaw, a story that takes in family life, the trials and tribulations of the Labour movement and World War Two...
Z-Cars
Character: Bert Lynch
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978....
Troubles
Character: Murphy
In 1919, Major Brendan Archer arrives in Ireland to reunite with his fiancée, Angela Spencer. Unfortunately, the family home, The Majestic Hotel, is a decaying shadow of its former self, as is Angela. Puzzled by the changes, Archer's attentions are soon drawn to her lively friend, Sarah Devlin, a passionate Irish Nationalist. They fall in love, but the Major soon discovers some disturbing aspects about their relationship, which threatens to explode into violence, destruction, and murder....
Movie Credits
Conspiracy of Silence
Character:
When a priest commits suicide and two trainees are expelled from a seminary, a journalist starts to investigate the Vatican’s silence on broken vows of celibacy. A thriller examining the internal conflicts in the modern Catholic church....
The Long March
Character: Joe Walsh
A woman returns to Belfast after ten years in England and becomes involved in the Maze prison protest....
The Near Room
Character: Pat
Charlie Colquhoun is a burnt out journalist. His old school friend Harris Hill is a lawyer at the top of his game. Their lives are smashed together by one name - Tommy Stirling, Charlie's daughter, a fostered teenage pregnancy who has become embroiled in an alleged child pornography scandal with a top ranking police officer. As the trail to Tommy begins to heat up, so the bodies begin to mount up. Allegiances fall by the wayside as Charlie's life begins to spiral out of control and the deadly wo...
Priest
Character: Father Ellerton
Father Greg Pilkington is torn between his call as a conservative Catholic priest and his secret life as a homosexual with a gay lover, frowned upon by the Church. Upon hearing the confession of a young girl of her incestuous father, Greg enters an intensely emotional spiritual struggle deciding between choosing morals over religion and one life over another....
A Coming to Terms for Billy
Character: Norman Martin
Belfast, 1980: July, the marching season ... Norman Martin, away for two years, returns with his 'English woman', Mavis. How will the family - particularly Billy - react? And has she achieved the impossible in mellowing the man? Third in the trilogy....
A Matter of Choice for Billy
Character: Norman Martin
Belfast 1978: the Martin family, a year on. Norman is away in England, and his eldest son, Billy, and daughter, Lorna, are in charge of their younger sisters, Ann and Maureen. Second in the trilogy....
Mark of the Devil
Character: Father Dowd
A desperate gambler in debt with a gangster robs a Chinese tattoo artist, getting stabbed and killing the man in the process. A black spot appears on his chest and begins to spread and turn into a condemning tattoo...
Best
Character: Dickie Beal
...
Doctor Who: Battlefield
Character: Peter Warmsley
Knights from a parallel universe arrive on Earth to find the legendary sword Excalibur. Only the Doctor and Ace, with the assistance of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, can save the Earth from total catastrophe....
No Surrender
Character: Paddy Burke
It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in....
Leapin' Leprechauns
Character: Patrick
A man tries to build a theme park on top of land that's secretly the home to friendly Leprechauns....
Spellbreaker: Secret of the Leprechauns
Character: Patrick
Fairyhill Ireland is a place filled with mysteries and legends,Leprechauns and Magic. And for an American Kid like Mike Dennehy, it's a world of wonderous adventure. Vacationing in Fairyhill for the summer, Mike makes friends with a fascinating group of rather unlucky leprechaunsby Nula, Queen of the Dead - an unbelievably beautiful and sinister witch. can the Queen destroy centuries of Leprechaun power? Will evil triumph? Gather up your lucky charms(you'll need them!) and get ready for Spellbre...
Crossing the Floor
Character: Andrew Carson
Political satire closely mirroring real-life British politics of the time - a self-serving Conservative minister "crosses the floor" to join the opposition Labour Party, at a time when the Conservative Party has a majority in Parliament of just one seat. Sequel to A Very Open Prison....
Shadow of a Gunman
Character: The Landlord
The first part of O'Casey's "The Dublin Trilogy". Set in 1920, as the War of Independence rages, "Shadow of a Gunman" is the story of two young men, Donal and Seamus who share a flat in Dublin....
Too Late to Talk to Billy
Character: Norman Martin
Relationships are strained in a Belfast family, particularly between a father and his son. First in a multi-year trilogy....
Lorna
Character: Norman Martin
In the follow-up to Graham Reid’s trilogy of ‘Billy’ plays, Billy's sister Lorna Martin is left to care for their Uncle Andy. Lorna feels trapped, but Andy wishes to give her the freedom she desires....
Resurrection Man
Character: Ivor Coppinger
Belfast, in 1970s. Victor Kelly is a young protestant man who hates the Catholics so much that one night he begins to brutally murder them. A reporter soon tries to uncover the murder and obtained prestige for himself, while Victor sinks deeper into madness....
James Ellis: An Actor's Life
Character: Himself
Documentary tracing the life of James Ellis, one of Northern Ireland’s best loved actors....
The Precious Blood
Character: Albert McVea
Rosie Williams is haunted by the murder of her husband 12 years previously. Her teenage son John is heading for a life of delinquency fuelled by revenge. Then, he meets Billy McVea, who runs a boxing gym, affecting all their lives....
Naming the Names
Character: Mr McCoy
Finn's story seems to begin when Henry Kirk comes into the bookshop where she works. But it goes back a lot further than that......