In July 2010 Julian played a Veteran Film Director in the Olly Murs music video Please Don’t Let Me Go, a fun shoot with a large cast of actors, dancers and models in the grounds of a large country house. Julian’s role obliged him to spend most of the shoot chatting up beautiful young women. Nice work if you can get it. At the last time of looking, the video had had more than 3.5 million hits on YouTube.

The second half of 2010 was dominated by the production of Chinese Burns, a micro-budget feature film written and produced by Julian, featuring him in one of the major roles, and made in creative partnership with Al Ronald, with whom Julian had the privilege of working previously on Stitchgirl.

During the pre-production phase of Chinese Burns, Julian managed to squeeze in some acting jobs. He played the Mysterious Stranger in an interesting short called Chasing Time, written and directed by Yana Kalugina for A & Y Productions. The young protagonist of the film has turmoil aplenty in his life. After various adventures, he sits down on a park bench where the Stranger is already seated. A conversation begins and the young man’s life is changed forever.

Then Simon Connolly of Not Waving But Drowning Films asked Julian to narrate his emotionally complex and visually stunning short film The Gay in The Attic.

Soon after, Tom Levinge of Flipper Wilson invited Julian to play one of the main roles, The Gardener, in his delightfully amusing music video Collarbone for a group called Tellison. Great fun!

Next Ben Hyland of Beat 24 Productions asked Julian to appear in his brilliant short film The Kiss. Julian had the pleasure of working with Ben a couple of years earlier, playing the role of Joshua Johnson in the musical feature film Frontman, the funny and moving story of a band reunion. In The Kiss he played an Old Man.

The Silver Goat is a psychological drama, filmed in black and white, produced by Paula Vaccaro and directed by Aaron Brookner for Pinball London. In it Julian played the cameo role of The Associate, a hard-nosed accountant, opposite the magisterial Don McCorkindale. On the shoot, Julian met Alexa Brown, who took the leading role of Lydia Brass.

Chinese Burns is a dark comedy ensemble piece involving an attractive young film student, an over-the-hill B movie actor, his wife, a young sound recordist, a soldier and a mini-cab driver. From this mis-matched crew, a dramatic and ridiculous story merges. The outstanding cast features Lara Lemon as the film student, Chris Grezo as the sound recordist, Natalie Milner as the actor’s wife, Cy Henty as the mini-cab driver, Danny Idollor Jr as the soldier and Julian as the Old Actor. Also outstanding were the actors in smaller roles, Bryan Hands as the Psychiatrist, Gael le Cornec as his Receptionist, Eleanor James as an Artist’s Model, Ian Prosser as the Workman’s Café Proprietor and… Alexa Brown as the Cemetery Violinist. Now in post-production, Chinese Burns should be ready to make the world laugh within the next few months.

2011 began with the pilot for a witty radio sitcom about Nuclear Physics, neatly entitled uNclear Physics, directed by Hugh Allison for Hurica Productions. Julian played Professor Sir Morris Townsend, the absent-minded and batty head of the British contingent at the Cern Large Hadron Collider.

Then Julian played a Cypriot Mafia Don in Antony Petrou’s low budget thriller Senet, in which Alexa Brown again played a leading role.

Hard on the heels of Senet, came a role in another low budget feature, Millbrook, a disturbing mystery, directed by Joseph Baker for Big View Media, in which Julian was given considerable freedom to improvise in the role of Richard Parkes, grandfather to the murdered (or was he?) young man at the centre of the drama.

Then followed another music video, Euphoria by the rising band Glasvegas, directed by Steve Jamison for Archer’s Mark and shot in the huge Island Studio at Greenford. The filming was complex with front projection onto various screens – and onto Julian’s face – and was shot digitally and on film simultaneously.