IAN KELLY’s works span stage, screen and ballet as well as historical biographies that have been on bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.. He is also an actor. This ballet is based on his ground breaking biography, Casanova, which was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year when it was first published in 2009 and has gone on to be translated into over twenty languages, including Latvian. Casanova was his first ballet scenario.
Stage plays include The Gates of Kyiv (a ballet-play-piano-concert hybrid, due to open in the West End later this year), Mr Foote’s Other Leg (Hampstead & West End), The Painted Hall (Greenwich & BBC Radio 4), and Cooking for Kings (New York, Off Broadway, and now a major Apple Originals series, Carême, written and created by Kelly, out on AppleTV in 2025). All his historical biographies (Beau Brummell, Casanova, Vivienne Westwood, Mr Foote, Carême) he has adapted for stage, television, film or dance-theatre.
Mr Foote’s Other Leg, the biography, won the Theatre Book of the Year Award in London, Cooking for Kings was a New York Times Bestseller and became an Off Broadway play, Beau Brummell a BBC TV film, and Casanova (also a BBC audiobook bestseller, read by Benedict Cumberbatch) was adapted as a ballet, scenario by Ian Kelly and Kenny Tindall.
As an actor, Ian’s screen work includes Howards End, Downton Abbey, In Love and War, Creation, The King’s Man, and the Russian epic Voina (Best Actor Nomination, Montreal Film Festival). He is also Hermione’s father in the Harry Potter films. On stage, his credits span the West End, The National Theatre and both Off Broadway and Broadway.
Current works in development include three tv projects co-writing with Julian Fellowes, a new play about Dr Johnson and, with Kenneth Tindall, an ballet adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.