For nearly thirty years Julia Ford was the mother at the edge of a British television drama, carrying more in a tired shoulder than the script gave her to say. Then she moved behind the camera, where she spends her time watching faces.
Fi1m perspective
Sheila Philips in Coming Down the Mountain (2007) is a mother who settled a question years ago and has not let herself reopen it. Mark Haddon's script gives her and Neil Dudgeon's John little to say about that, and never leaves them in a room together long enough to find out what the decision cost. Ford plays the cost anyway. The tiredness is in her shoulders before it is in her lines, and we found ourselves watching her at the edge of scenes that were about somebody else, moved by a woman the film had half forgotten.
That was her trade for nearly thirty years. After Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and a lead at the National Theatre at 23, as Agnes in Molière's The School for Wives, she settled into British television and the social-realist end of British film: Sandra Woolley in Shane Meadows's A Room for Romeo Brass (1999), Sally in Now Is Good (2012), Jean in Radiator (2014), three films with the director Kenny Glenaan, and runs in Shameless, Misfits and Happy Valley (2014). Mothers, mostly, and women in charge of something, and women in trouble. A Room for Romeo Brass is the one that earned her the word underrated, which has followed her about ever since.
Then, around forty, she turned round. Short films first, then episodes of Doctors and Moving On, then a steady run of series: Safe (2018), Sticks and Stones (2019), The Bay and Grace (2021), Everything I Know About Love (2022), Until I Kill You (2024) and the second series of Showtrial (2024), three of them with World Productions and the producer Ken Horn. She has said plainly that she prefers directing. By her own account she waits, lets the cast try things, and keeps the takes few so nothing goes stale. On Until I Kill You, a true-crime drama told from the survivor's side, she worked handheld, with shallow focus, holding on a face while something changed in it. "I’m really fascinated by faces," she has said. "I almost hold my breath watching a take." That is Sheila Philips's shoulders, seen from the other side of the camera.
The caveat is the obvious one. Holding on a face is a habit that can become a tic, and true crime is a genre that likes to linger a beat too long, so each series has to earn its lingering on its own. What we can say is where to begin. Start with A Room for Romeo Brass and Coming Down the Mountain to see what she did when nobody was giving her the scene, then watch Until I Kill You and ask whether, now that she decides who gets it, she gives it to the woman at the edge of the frame.
Biography
Julia Ford is a British actress and director. She began her career with a lead role as Agnes in Molière's School for Wives at the National Theatre at the age of 23. Her stage work also includes Lydia Lambert in Husbands and Sons at the National Theatre in 2015 and 2016.
As an actress, Ford has appeared in films including A Room for Romeo Brass (1999), Coming Down the Mountain (2007) as Sheila Philips, Now Is Good (2012) as Sally, and Radiator (2014). Television credits include Midsomer Murders (1997), Shameless (2004), Being Human (2009), Misfits (2009), Vera (2011), and Happy Valley (2014).
Ford has directed episodes of Safe (2018) for Netflix, Sticks and Stones (2019) for ITV, Everything I Know About Love (2022), and the miniseries Until I Kill You (2024), for which she won an RTS Craft & Design Award.
