James Laurenson was born on the north Island of New Zealand, the son of an amateur actor. James studied at Canterbury University College in Christchurch where he made his theatrical debut in the title role of Hamlet under the direction of mystery author Dame Ngaio Marsh. In 1965, he moved to England and worked for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Having established his credentials as a Shakespearean actor, Laurenson rejoined the RSC in the seventies, his many roles including Charles the Dauphin in Henry VI, Cassio in Othello and Orlando in As You Like it. For the National Theatre, he appeared in Macbeth (as Macduff) and Hamlet (Ghost/ Player King). A more recent performance saw him as Vladimir in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal in Bath.

Laurenson found it difficult at first to break into screen acting. Not until 1968 did he make his television debut as a priest in the long-running soap Coronation Street (1960). He next played the youngest of the pirates (Dick Johnson) in an early BBC adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1968). He acted in several filmed BBC Shakespeare plays in-between a few small supporting parts on the big screen. In 1972, Laurenson made his breakthrough in the title role of Boney (1972) (Detective Inspector Napoleon 'Boney' Bonaparte), a half-Aboriginal police officer with superior tracking skills. The series benefited greatly from being filmed at rugged outback locations. Though the casting of a non-Aboriginal was (and has remained) controversial, Boney was a huge hit in both Australia and the U.K. (though not in America). It also proved popular in Germany. So much so, that record producer and songwriter Frank Farian named the disco group Boney M. after the character.

Hoping to avoid typecasting, Laurenson decided not to extend his contract for a third season and returned to England. In the course of the next five decades, he went on to become a familiar face as guest star in numerous TV shows, on more than a few occasions in the guise of morally ambiguous, pompous or villainous individuals. A small sample of his credits includes episodes of Space: 1999 (1975), Remington Steele (1982), Van der Valk (1972), Sharpe (1993), Silent Witness (1996), Dalziel and Pascoe (1996) and Hustle (2004). More recently, he played the Earl of Shrewsbury in Wolf Hall (2015), Oxford Professor George Amory in Endeavour (2012), Father Brown (2013)'s friend Professor Hilary Ambrose and Royal Physician Doctor John Weir in The Crown (2016).

For many years a resident of the Somerset, England market town of Frome, James Laurenson died on 18 April 2024, at the age of 84.