'Downton Abbey' actor reveals passion for writing Dan Stevens, otherwise known as Matthew Crawley, is a literary star off-screen (TODAY BOOKS)

By Rachel Elbaum
TODAY contributor
updated 2/24/2012 1:59:52 PM ET

Millions of women have fallen in love with “Downton Abbey’s” Matthew Crawley, known in real life as Dan Stevens. But Stevens, 28, is more than a gifted actor with piercing blue eyes and a disarming smile. He is also an accomplished writer, the editor-at-large of the new literary magazine “The Junket,” and regular contributor to the Telegraph newspaper’s "My Week" feature.

Stevens, who studied English Literature at Cambridge, is currently in the midst of filming the love story, “Summer in February,” on location in Cornwall, as well as the third season of "Downton Abbey."

“The dawn eventually thaws us to reveal a serene and clear blue day, while the rest of the country is dusted with snow, slush and chaos,” he wrote in this month's My Week piece, published on Tuesday. “There is always a risk in making a film called ‘Summer in February’ in a Cornish winter, but the gods are with us this particular day and beneath the weatherproofed hoods and wind-chapped faces of the crew you can detect a few glowing smiles through the frosted beards.”

Stevens' love for literature began at Cambridge University, where he studied English just around the time that his acting career started to blossom. He started a writing blog several years ago with four friends from his college days.

But while the blog was meant to encourage the group to write more often, procrastination got the better of them. Instead of putting their ambitions by the wayside, the men decided to start a quarterly literary magazine, figuring that it would require a commitment they couldn’t so easily shirk.


READ MORE: http://www.today.com/id/46501762/site/todayshow/ns/today-books/t/downton-abbey-actor-reveals-passion-writing/#.UQw7loc1k8d

Brendan Coyle reveals his mother scolded him following his foul-mouthed Twitter spat (MAIL ON LINE)

 By EMILY SHERIDAN and FAY STRANG

He shocked his fans when he became embroiled in a Twitter row about politics, using very colourful language.

And it seems Brendan Coyle also managed to upset his mother with his swearing, showing you’re never too old to be told off.

The Downton Abbey star took to Twitter to share his dressing down, writing: ‘Just rang my mum from the @NOBLEmovie set...she told me off for swearing... #yourenevertooold’

READ MORE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2271871/Brendan-Coyle-reveals-mother-scolded-following-foul-mouthed-Twitter-spat.html

Hugh Bonneville: “I Hope ‘Downton’ Ends While We Are Ahead” By Fraser McAlpine | Posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013 (BBC America)

Here’s a worrying thought.

Hugh Bonneville, star of Downton Abbey, thespian of note and general all-round thinking person’s Lord of the Manor, has expressed a worry that the TV series that not only made him a household name (in places where Downton is a hit, obviously) but also keeps him in hot dinners, should end sooner rather than later.

His concern appears to be keeping the brand alive at the cost of the things that make it a success, namely the period in which it is set, the age and experiences of the characters, and Julian Fellowes’ ability to make the passing of history sit comfortably within the world he has created.

He told the Mail: “I am sure the money men would like it to go on for ever and ever because it does sell extremely well around the world. I think the next series is nudging forward and starts six to eight months ahead from the last and I think we will start to bump into other period dramas if we are not careful time wise.”

By which he presumably means Brideshead Revisited, revisited.

READ MORE: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/01/hugh-bonneville-i-hope-downton-ends-while-we-are-ahead/

Downton Abbey, Episode 3, Season 3 (MASTERPIECE CLASSIC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvwCX4AdE_w

Rob James-Collier: 'My Downton Abbey Character Should Be Dead' January 17th, 2013 7:54pm EST (STAR PULSE)

Downton Abbey star Rob James-Collier still can't believe his TV villain Thomas Barrow is still alive - because the scheming valet was supposed to be killed off at the end of season one. 

The actor was thrilled to learn he'd won the role but his agent informed him he would not have it for long. 

James-Collier recalls, "He said, 'Listen, you've got the part that everyone in town wants - he's a villain, he's a great role, the only bad thing is that he dies at the end of the first series.'" 

READ MORE: http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2013/01/17/rob_jamescollier_my_downton_abbey_char

Downton Abbey - The best of Maggie Smith

Watch Downton Abbey: The Best Maggie Moments on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

Downton Abbey - Scene from Episode Three

Watch Downton Abbey, Season 3: A Scene from Episode 3 on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch-online/shorts/downton-abbey-season-3-scene-episode-3/?elq=5c8d800f5b7643c288b7d3423b967747&elqCampaignId=506

SPOILER DOWNTON ABBEY: Julian Fellowes Talks

Fellowes: More drama for Lady Mary

Julian Fellowes has revealed that he's not too disappointed about Dan Stevens' exit from Downton Abbey - because it will bring more drama for Lady Mary Crawley.

Dan's character Matthew Crawley was killed off in the Christmas Day edition of the ITV1 period drama, and the creator promised that there will be juicy plots for his widow Mary, played by Michelle Dockery in upcoming fourth series.

"I adore Dan, I love him and wish him nothing but good things. He was terrific for us but that said, it's very hard to dramatise happiness," he said.

"Now Mary, having been very happy, is now having to fight her corner again and having to protect the interests of her child. In a way, that's interesting dramatically."

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/fellowes-more-drama-for-lady-mary-16261565.html#ixzz2I3mQVsQ5

Daniel Day-Lewis: ‘Downton Abbey’ is ‘Why I Left England’ By Leah Rozen | Posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 (BBC AMERICA)

Daniel Day-Lewis at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards on Monday. (Kristina Bumphrey, Starpix/AP Images)

Nearly eight million viewers tuned into PBS on Sunday night to see the premiere of Downton Abbey’s third season, but Oscar nominee Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t one of them.

When asked the next night if he had watched Lady Mary and Matthew wed, the British actor half-sneeringly, half-laughingly said, “Are you kidding? “That [sort of thing] is why I left England!”

Day-Lewis made his comment at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards in Manhattan last Monday evening to Roger Friedman, an entertainment journalist at the Showbiz 411 web site. Day-Lewis was there to pick up a Best Actor award for his presidential performance in Lincoln, for which he received an Oscar nomination this morning.

Even if Day-Lewis wasn’t watching, some 7.9 million viewers did catch the opening

READ MORE: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/01/daniel-day-lewis-downton-abbey-is-why-i-left-england/

Jeremy Piven: Brit actors are so humble (BELFAST TELEGRAPH)

Jeremy Piven has revealed he reckons British stars are more modest than their US peers.

The New York-born actor plays the lead role in new ITV1 Sunday night drama Mr Selfridge alongside a cast including Katherine Kelly, Frances O'Connor and Samuel West.

"What's so interesting is this is the best cast I have ever worked with, and everyone is so unbelievably good and I'm not just saying that," he told Daybreak.

"I feel like everyone is overqualified for their role. In the States we really love to celebrate ourselves and take victory laps - that's what we do as Americans. And the Brits just go to work and they work really hard and they just get on with it and everyone works on a very high level and that's just the norm.



Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/piven-brit-actors-are-so-humble-16259221.html#ixzz2HUrAurWi

Downton Abbey: The Best Moments of Bates and Anna

Watch Downton Abbey: Best Moments of Bates and Anna on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2322635453/

Doctor Who and Sherlock battle for National Television awards BBC1 shows among those nominated for best drama alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Matt Smith for best actor John Plunkett The Guardian, Monday 7 January 2013 (THE GUARDIAN)

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch will be competing for National Television awards best actor against rival Matt Smith of Doctor Who. Both shows are also up for best drama. Photograph: AP

Sherlock and Doctor Who will go head to head later this month for two of the big prizes at the National Television awards, which will feature a special award to celebrate the success of the Olympics and Paralympics.

The two BBC1 shows are both nominated for best drama, along with ITV1's Downton Abbey and Merlin, which has just been brought to an end by BBC1.

Doctor Who's Matt Smith and Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch are in the running for the best drama actor prize, along with Merlin's Colin Morgan and Daniel Mays, who starred in ITV1's Mrs Biggs.

The nominations bode well for Steven Moffat, the Doctor Who showrunner who is also, along with former League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock.

There is another Doctor Who nomination for Karen Gillan, who played the doctor's former companion Amy Pond and bowed out of the series last year.

Gillan is nominated in the drama performance female category, along with Miranda Hart of BBC1's Call The Midwife, Suranne Jones of ITV1's Scott & Bailey and Sheridan Smith (Mrs Biggs).

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/08/doctor-who-sherlock-national-tv-awards

Review: A return to old ways at 'Downton Abbey' Last season seemed to be a bit over-plotted, but the household appears to be humming along again in its repressed, backbiting way. (LA TIMES)

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

January 5, 2013

"Downton Abbey," a period British TV series that has become an American obsession, is back Sunday night for its third season, in the framework of "Masterpiece: Classic." For the several millions who have waited months for its return, it is a day that has not come too soon; I am not unhappy to see it myself.

With its castle and costumes and superior production values — the show is never less than lovely to look at, and most every second of it is deliciously acted, in a way you are meant to notice — it is comfort food packaged as a gourmet meal, old soap in a Tiffany container. And after a sometimes wayward second season, with its distractions of war and influenza, the present series brings both a return to form and to its original subject matter: the preservation of the estate.

From the pen of Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park"), it is, briefly, the story of a big house (and a little house nearby) and the people who live there and suffer as a group from poor communication skills and an excess of pride. A few, mostly below stairs, are schemers, Maggie Smith's dowager countess being the notable plotter above, though she works for her family's reputation rather than personal advancement, having nowhere higher to advance.

"Downton" is paradoxical at heart: It satisfies our yearning for what appears a more clear-cut time, when everyone knew his or her place and its rules, even as it argues, possibly in spite of itself, for its destruction. It celebrates the old days and ways we are glad not to live in or have to follow.

And although a success at home in the U.K. — a fourth season and a prequel are in the works — it might have been specifically created to exploit romantic American notions of life in a British country house, as those grand Gothic-y piles are quaintly called, as well as our inbred post-colonial impression that we are above all that. It runs on a mixture of envy and desire.

Almost in recognition of this fact, we get a visit this year from Shirley MacLaine as the Yankee mother of the Anglicized lady of the house, the countess Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), all sharp angles and straight talk. And straight talk is just what these characters like to avoid, though they are also forever explaining themselves, in order that no point go unmissed.

Last year's plotting at times seemed practical rather than organic, crafted merely to build up or destroy the credit of this or that character, as when Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), entered into an unconvincing, all-but-consummated affair with a housemaid. Even the well-loved witticisms of the dowager countess felt a bit weighted and compulsory.

READ MORE OF LA TIMES REVIEW: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-downton-abbey-review-20130105,0,3358258.story

‘Downton Abbey’ finally make Hugh Bonneville a star MONDAY DECEMBER 31, 2012, 11:17 AM BY LUAINE LEE MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE (NORTH JERSEY)

From left, Elizabeth McGovern as Lady Cora, Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham, Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary are shown in a scene from the second season of 'Downton Abbey.'

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — You could never tell by looking at this dapper Englishman who plays the stalwart Earl of Grantham on “Downton Abbey,” but when he was 7 years old Hugh Bonneville hurled a sledgehammer through the family’s kitchen window.

It was not indicative of things to come, Bonneville insists. “I’m not prone to temper tantrums. I used to be a bad sulker. We’re not a shouty family, and nowadays I can forgive but I don’t forget,” he says. “I’m a Scorpio. If you have a go at a Scorpio they can get you back sometime,” he laughs, easing into a wing-chair in a hotel meeting room here.

The occasion of the sledgehammer was prompted by his older sister’s teasing. “She was annoying me. So I chased her through the garden, and she went back inside, shut the kitchen door and went, ‘Nah, nah’ through the kitchen window. And I saw a sledgehammer and popped it through the window. Cut to my dad chasing me round the garden and I got a big smacked bottom. That changed my life. That was a big lesson.”

Bonneville has been acting for 26 years, but it took the mysterious alchemy of an absorbing script, astute producers and a dream cast of “Downton Abbey” to elevate him to star status. That doesn’t really matter because, like every actor, Bonneville says he still worries where the next job is coming from.

“‘Downton Abbey’ is a hugely popular show and I love it, but it will end at some point and then I need to find work. We’re all waiting for hire,” he says.

READ MORE: http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/Downton_Abbey_finally_make_Hugh_Bonneville_a_star.html

SPOILER ALERT FOR DOWNTON ABBEY IN AMERICA

**SPOILER ALERT for U.S. fans of DOWNTON ABBEY who have not yet viewed the drama's third season or last night's holiday episode which aired on Britain's ITV network**

DOWNTON ABBEY creator Julian Fellowes has officially decided the fate of Dan Stevens' character 'Matthew Crawley,' he told the Daily Telegraph this weekend.

Rumors of Stevens' potential departure developed months ago, when he first made the move to Broadway to star in THE HEIRESS alongside Oscar-nominated actress Jessica Chastain.

Crawley, following the series' Christmas special, will officially be killed off. Fellowes told the paper that he "didn't really have an option."

"We have always tried to persuade him to stay," Fellowes said. "He had done fantastically well for the series and his creation of Matthew was terrific.

But there was no changing Steven's mind, Fellowes said.

"But this is life. Dan felt that this was right thing for him, and the right moment to move on to different areas."

There were few options Fellowes could take with DOWNTON's Crawley, while respecting the character's relationship with Mary. There was one choice, and Fellowes, as the showrunner, knew it was the only viable one.

"So we didn't really have any option. By him dying, their love can remain in tact."


READ MORE: http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Julian-Fellowes-has-Decided-Matthew-Crawleys-Fate-on-DOWNTON-ABBEY-20121230

'Quartet' Star Tom Courtenay Refused To Watch Dame Maggie Smith As The Dowager In 'Downton Abbey' (huffington post)

Veteran British actor Tom Courtenay deliberately avoided watching Dame Maggie Smith in 'Downton Abbey' before playing her love interest onscreen because he didn't want to be "put off".

Courtenay puckers up to kiss Smith in their movie 'Quartet', about a group of retired opera singers, and admits he didn't want to see her as feisty character the Dowager Countess of Grantham in the hit TV show before their big moment.

READ MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/24/quartet-star-tom-courtenay-dowger-downton-abbey-maggie-smith_n_2357746.html

SPOILER - KING OF SPOILERS - DOWNTON ABBEY CHRISTMAS EPISODE **BEWARE** (MAIL ON LINE)

By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

The fatal twist was so unforeseen that it took the breath away. In Downton Abbey, after two hours of premonitions that Lord Grantham’s oldest daughter, Mary, would suffer the fate of her sister Sybil and die in childbirth, an entirely different tragedy occurred.

It happened off-screen: an open-topped roadster on a country lane, a looming lorry, and then a cut to Maggie Smith in the Abbey drawing room, reflecting that ‘we don’t always get our just deserts’.

That was, for her, an uncharacteristic understatement. Mary’s husband, cousin Matthew, was bowling home from the maternity hospital, where he had just kissed hello to his baby son, born a few weeks premature. 

He told his wife that he felt as if he’d swallowed a box of fireworks. She told him to remember the feeling, so that he’d forgive her more easily next time she did something silly... like crashing his precious car.

Downton Abbey has never been Matthew’s story: it’s a family saga. And yet he has been the pivot, the axle for the free-wheeling plot.

READ MORE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2253255/Downton-Abbey-A-baby-Matthew-dead-road-A-true-Downton-jaw-dropper.html

Hugh Bonneville like a kid at Christmas (yahoo entertainment)

Hugh Bonneville gets ''pathetically excited'' about Father Christmas.

The 'Downton Abbey' actor has confessed he turns into an eager child during the festive season and is ''religious'' about making sure everything is done right for the arrival of the main man on Christmas Day (25.12.12).

He revealed: ''I'm in charge of games. No, my main role is to keep out of the way! I get pathetically excited about Father Christmas coming and I'm religious about putting out mince pies and a glass of wine and then checking for

footprints in the fireplace.''

Hugh, who has 11-year-old son Felix with wife of 27 years Lulu Williams, will make several appearances on UK TV this year. Not only will he star in the 'Downton Abbey' Christmas special as Lord Grantham but he will also be in David Walliams' adaptation of children's book 'Mr Stink', playing the main character.

READ MORE: http://nz.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/article/-/15708976/hugh-bonneville-like-a-kid-at-christmas/

Warwickshire's Downton Abbey star Brendan Coyle tells of international fame (COVENTRY TELEGRAPH)

by Marion McMullen, Coventry TelegraphDec 24 2012

 DOWNTON Abbey has turned Warwickshire butcher’s son Brendan Coyle into an international hit.

Brendan can be seen playing stoic valet Bates when the glossy ITV hit returns on Christmas Day with a two-hour special.

The 1920s TV drama has seen Bates deal with an injured leg, fall in love and end up behind bars after being falsely accused of murdering his jealous ex-wife.

Brendan, whose father ran a butcher’s shop in Rugby, said: “A friend in LA was working on a film recently and he sent me a photograph of one of the crew wearing a Free Bates t-shirt. I don’t have one, but maybe that’s my Christmas presents sorted out.”



Read More http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2012/12/24/warwickshire-s-downton-abbey-star-brendan-coyle-tells-of-international-fame-92746-32485830/#ixzz2FylLUj2A

‘Downton Abbey’ season 3: New videos featuring Joanne Froggatt, Hugh Bonneville (CARTER)

Before taking back to Britain to promote (and hopefully watch) their Christmas special, the cast of “Downton Abbey” season 3 all had an opportunity this past week to help promote the upcoming third season on PBS (premiering on January 6) on Anderson Cooper’s “Anderson Live!” talk show. What unfolded as a result was a rather lovely combination of humor, heart, and information about the show that so many of us love.

READ MORE PLUS ANOTHER VIDEO:http://cartermatt.com/44407/downton-abbey-season-3-new-videos-featuring-joanne-frogatt-hugh-bonneville/