Early Life and Career
James Ellis attended the Methodist College Belfast and later studied at Queen's University Belfast and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
He began to act with the Belfast-based Ulster Group Theatre in 1952. He first appeared in a revival of the Louis D'Alton (1900-51 play They Got What They Wanted (1947), and he 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).
While continuing as an actor in the main company, he also undertook the management of the Group's summer theatre in the seaside town of Larne, north of Belfast. Ellis's most important roles for the Group include the lead role of Christy Mahon in a production of J. M.Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1957. He did not have a major part in the Group's staging of The Bonefire, Gerard McLarnon's then controversial play about the tragic love between a wealthy Protestant young woman and a poor Catholic man in 1958, but was cast in the minor role of Davy.
Ellis had a major part to play in the staging of Sam Thompson's even more controversial Over the Bridge (1960). In December 1958 Ellis had been appointed the Group Theatre's Director of Productions, but he resigned this position in July 1959 to direct the production of Thompson's play, which was to be staged by a group of actors and directors who had quit the Group in protest over its decision to withdraw Over the Bridge, which had been in rehearsals, after the Group's board deemed the play too inflammatory.
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