Johnny Melville was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. After graduating in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University 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. His range and flexibility reflects all this experience in the various film roles he has played. He has performed movie roles in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Danish.

In 1990 the Italian director Vana Paoli cast him in the lead role Lungo il Fiume and since then he has played in 20 feature films with lead roles in Blindspot (Netherlands), Castingx (Netherlands) and No Man’s Land (Denmark) as well as lead roles in the 30-minute films Game Over (TV film Austria), Killer Berberechos (Spain) and The Trench (Spain). He has since written and directed five 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 participates in an acting role in whatever he directs.

He has had the privilege to work with Robert Towne, Alex de La Iglesia, Carrol Baker, Emma Roberts, Nigel Terry, Iain Charleson, Rutger Hauer, Dana Gillespie, Cyron Melville, Alex Casanovas, Kim Bodnia, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Peter Gantzler, Dieter Meier, Jango Edwards, Slava Polunin and Danish director Martin Zandvliet (Land of Mine – Oscar nominee )

In 2001 he won BEST ACTOR at Brooklyn (Williamsburg) Film Festival for his lead role in Nina Rosenmeier’s No Man’s Land.

In 2011 his first short Backtracker won him 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) for the short Catalan film Primates. In 2020 he appeared in the powerful new series 30 COINS directed by Alex de la Iglesia, and various other Spanish TV and film productions.