Johnny Melville was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. After graduating in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University and gaining a teaching degree At Moray House College he moved to London where he then performed in and directed a series of projects at Oval House London, as director of Salakta Balloon Band and later as founder/director of Kaboodle Theatre company. Between 1978 – 2010 he performed six different solo shows COME AGAIN, TROUBLESHOOTER, MEMBERS ONLY, DIRTY MONEY, EUROPEAN BLUES and BEST OF JOHNNY. These were seen by an estimated 1 and a half million people in over 40 countries.

He has performed for every possible audience imaginable: the Queen of Denmark, African Bushmen, Russian spies, German riot-police, Japanese businessmen, Chiapas Indians, pensioners, prisoners & children across Europe, Japan, Russia, Australia and the Americas.

In 1990 the Italian director Vana Paoli cast him in the lead role for his first movie Lungo il Fiume and since then he has played in 20 feature films with lead roles in Lungo il Fiume (Italy), Blindspot (Netherlands), Castings (Netherlands) and No Man’s Land (Denmark) and lead roles in the 30 minute shorts Game Over (TV film Austria), Killer Berberechos (Spain) and The Trench (Spain). He has since written and directed 5 short films in English, Dutch, German and Catalan (Its a Woman’s World, Paradise Tours, Bitxos y Roses, Bubblebath and Windows) and around 40 mini-shorts. He always plays a role in ever one of his projects.

He has had the privilege to work with Alex de La Iglesias, Carrol Baker, Emma Roberts, Rutger Hauer, Dana Gillespie, Alex Casanovas, Kim Bodnia, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Peter Gantzler, Yello, Jango Edwards, Slava Polunin and Danish director Martin Zandvliet (Land of Mine – Oscar nominee for best foreign language film 2017)

In 2001 he won BEST ACTOR at Brooklyn Film Festival for his lead role in NIna Rosenmeier’s .

In 2011 his first short Backtracker, a Western that he wrote, directed and starred in, won BEST DIRECTOR & BEST ACTOR at Girona Film Festival. He also received the XAVIER CUGAT AWARD at the same festival.

In 2015 he won SPECIAL HONORABLE MENTION OF THE JURY at Marbella Filmmaker International Film Festival and ACTOR OF THE MONTH (August) at the Monthly Film Festival (online) for The Trench.

In 2019 he won BEST ACTOR at the Bogota Animal Film Festival (Colombia) and BEST PERFORMER at the John Abraham Short Film Festival (India)