Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes has found success late in life, and only after abandoning a modest acting career to chronicle the foibles of Britain’s upper class.

He has been busy since making the change. “The Young Victoria,” based on his screenplay, opens next month. The stage musical “Mary Poppins,” based on his story adaptation, is running on Broadway and opened in Los Angeles on Nov. 15. His novel “Past Imperfect,” about the decline of the aristocracy during the 1960s, was published in the U.S. in September.

Fellowes, 60, was an occasionally employed actor before winning an Oscar in 2002 for his screenplay for “Gosford Park,” director Robert Altman’s examination of class distinctions. U.K. audiences knew Fellowes as the bumbling aristocrat Kilwillie in the TV comedy “Monarch of the Glen.” U.S. viewers might recognize him as the U.K. defense minister in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies.”

His new career has brought respect as well as recognition, he said.

“I’ve been ignored and I’ve been sucked up to and, on the whole, I prefer being sucked up to,” Fellowes said jokingly in a telephone interview from his London home. “I spent a long time slogging my way up the hill.”

Fellowes refers to his own family as gentry, one social rung below aristocracy. He attended Ampleforth College, a private boarding school, and Cambridge. His background was a liability when he began seeking roles in the late 1960s, he said.

Anti-Toff

“There is a large part of the entertainment establishment that would rather we only made films about leftists and revolutionaries,” Fellowes said. “I think the down-market, anti-toff drab thing is alive and well. The difference is that it is possible for other types to have careers alongside that.”

To make ends meet during his acting years, Fellowes began adapting literary works for television, including a 1995 production of “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” A few years later, Altman approached him about “Gosford Park.”

Fellowes is a defender of the upper class, even though he frequently criticizes it. His first novel, “Snobs,” about a middle-class social climber, satirizes the rituals and sometimes narrow opinions of Britain’s elite. “Past Imperfect” is about their inability to adjust to the social and economic changes of the postwar era.

“I have a kind of schizophrenic feeling about them,” Fellowes said. “There are aspects about them that I admire. I like the fact they don’t complain. They’re not a self-pitying group as a rule.”

‘Past Imperfect’

“Past Imperfect” is based in part on Fellowes’s own experiences on the edge of London’s high society. In the late 1960s, family ties won him a place among a group of carefully vetted young men invited to escort debutantes through “the Season,” a series of coming-out balls and parties.

“I was part of it, but I was a very unimportant part, which I think is a better viewing post,” Fellowes said.

“The Young Victoria” stars Emily Blunt as the 19th-century queen and Rupert Friend as her husband, Prince Albert. Work on the movie began after Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, suggested a film about the queen to “The Departed” producer Graham King, Fellowes said. The film opens in U.S. theaters on Dec. 18.

“The Victorian period was in many ways the zenith for the British aristocracy,” he said. “They had ceased to be a rather useless class as they had been in the 18th century. The Victorian period changed that. You were supposed to be doing something worthwhile.”

“Past Imperfect” is published by St. Martin’s Press (410 pages, $24.99). To buy this book, click here.

(Michael White is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael White in Los Angeles at mwhite8@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 23, 2009 00:01 EST