BIOGRAPHY:

Film work: most recently the role of Captain Fitzroy of The Beagle in Jon Amiel's Creation and Hermione's father in the last of the Harry Potter films. Other film work includes Richard Attenborough’s In Love and War, with Sandra Bullock and James Ivory’s Howards End and the Russian films Admiral Kolchak and the Russian-Chechen epic Voina for which Ian was nominated for Best Actor at the Montreal Film Festival.

Television work includes: Prince Harry in Armando Ianucci’s Time Trumpet, but also Dennis Potter’s last work, Cold Lazarus, Silent Witness, Sensitive Skin, Drop the Dead Donkey, Hetty Wainthropp, The Moth, Silent Witness and Just William amongst many others.

Theatre work includes, in London’s West End, the 1800 comedy A Busy Day (which Ian championed from fringe production to Shaftesbury Avenue. LWT Plays on Stage Award) Arcadia (Best Actor Nomination, Manchester Drama Awards) Henry in Henry V for the English Shakespeare Company, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Arsenic and Old Lace, Single Spies, Pygmalion, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and the Greatest Plays of the 20th century season at the Royal National Theatre. Ian has worked extensively in radio drama, including for Peter Sellars on Mexico City Blues, on NPR and Voice of America.

TV documentary: Ian is also known in the UK for A Taste of the Past, a series on the Richard and Judy show on the history of food which he devised, wrote, presented and cooked for live in-studio. He also wrote and presented Regency Banquet for Channel 4, and was associate producer on Flashback TV’s adaptation of his book, Beau Brummell for BBC 4. He has recently filmed a documentary about the Brighton Pavilion for Lion TV for The History Channel.

'The Pitmen Painters' returns to the National Theatre in London in
September 2009 prior a UK national tour and its Broadway opening
slated for March 2010.

Writing: Ian's most recent book, a new biography of notorious 18th century memoirist Giacomo Casanova was named Biography of the Year in the Sunday Times. It comes out in paperback in the UK in 2009 and has been sold to numerous international markets. 'The best book yet written on the world's greatest lover' Simon Sebag Montefiore, 'Magnificent' - The Times, 'Delectable biography' - New Statesman.

‘Casanova dazzles once again, and so, too, does his biographer’ ***** The Mail on Sunday. 'In author Ian Kelly, after two hundred years, Casanova has at last found his Boswell' - The Telegraph, ‘Enthralling...Casanova is stripped bare...a wonderful read...pulsing with testosterone, energy and a determination to strip Casanova’s story of historical and cultural assumptions and return, via archival research all over Europe, to the man himself.’ - The Mail on Sunday.

'Casanova would have been proud... Kelly does a marvellous and brilliantly unobtrusive job... like his previous Beau Brummell, Casanova is a treasure-trove of life...the effect is as though we had gone around the back after show. Here is Casanova himself, without the makeup and the trick lighting, talking through Kelly's subtle reticent voice (he commands instant respect as a stylist of some wit)...emerging, scaling the leads, opening the bedroom window, moving closer, smiling. It is Casanova. He's alive. He is alive.' - The New Statesman

Ian’s previous work, the biography Beau Brummell, The Ultimate Dandy, received universal acclaim in the UK and USA. Described as a ‘superlative – as good as biography gets’ (The Times) ‘witty, vibrant, a tour de force’ (The Telegraph) ‘magisterial and utterly gripping parable for modern times’ (The Independent) ‘worthy of Balzac’, (The Mail on Sunday) ‘almost unbearably moving (The Glasgow Herald) and ‘possibly the best book ever written about London’ (BBC Radio 5) the book was immediately bought by the BBC and adapted as Beau Brummell This Charming Man as the centre piece of the recent Century that Made Us 18th century season. Meanwhile, Ian starred as Beau Brummell in Ron Hutchinson’s play Beau Brummell in New York; a performance hailed by the New York Times as ‘witty, poignant, engaging and intensely sympathetic.’ An exhibition on dandyism at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened in May 2006 Anglomania, which featured Brummell and on which Kelly collaborated.

His first book, Cooking for Kings, A Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef, has been on bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, and has been translated into five languages. It was
serialised in The Observer Food Monthly, spawned a UK documentary series, a radio serial and a New York stage adaptation. Cooking for Kings, the book, was hailed in the press as ‘magnificent’ (Anthony Bourdain) ‘absolutely irresistible’ (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) and ‘required reading for anyone who finds food and history relevant,’ (Mark Kurlansky) and the play, adapted by Kelly from his own book, was similarly a critical and box office success: ‘consuming, astonishing, passionate drama’ ‘a phenomenal performance,’ ‘the most inspiring play in New York this year’ (this last from the admittedly partial FoodArts Magazine!)

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