MAD ABOUT THE BOY
ALMOST 18 YEARS SINCE HE DANCED HIS WAY INTO FAME AS BILLY ELLIOT, JAMIE BELL IS STILL STEALING THE SCREEN – AND OUR HEARTS
Billy Elliot’s Jamie Bell has well and truly found his groove.
One of the most endearing things about Jamie Bell is that even if he is sick of talking about Billy Elliot, he doesn’t let on. “I mean, occasionally, only because I don’t know how many years it’s been, 17, maybe more. But I know that I owe so much of what I have now to that, so I have to be eternally grateful. It kind of gave me everything.”
Bell, who comes from a long line of dancers, was a 14-year-old tapping protégé when he jetéd out of obscurity – chosen from around 2,000 young boys much like him – into the role, which landed him a BAFTA best actor award. Post-filming, he moved away from his family home to live with director Stephen Daldry and, needless to say, going to the grocery store hasn’t been the same since.
Now in his thirties, with almost as many films under his belt, he lives a quiet life, married to House Of Cards actress Kate Mara. With no mention of drugfuelled arrests yielded by a Google search of his name, he’s very much an exception to the rule of child actors. It’s something he humbly credits to those around him (including his long-time manager and agent, respectively), who he says “are everything”. “I owe so much to them. Through my career and the choices I’ve made and the opportunities I’ve had, it’s those people who really guided me. Otherwise I’d be totally up a creek without a certain instrument.”
Bell is notoriously protective of the privacy of his own young son with his ex-wife, actress Evan Rachel Wood (who he was married to for almost two years) – the former couple going so far as to keep his name from public knowledge. But he insists that same Billy Elliot-level of fame isn’t something he’s wary of. “It hasn’t really affected my style of parenting,” he says. “I mean, would I necessarily want him going off and doing a movie when he’s a teenager? Not really. I’m so grateful my mum put me in that position and gave me that opportunity, but I have no other skill. If something falls off a wall, it’s over. I’m literally useless at everything else so I wouldn’t know what [else] to do. I would definitely encourage my kid to have another option because there’s no guarantee in acting and you’re not entitled to anything.”
Bell is well-versed in the limitations of his craft. “I have such a love-hate relationship with acting, and I’m not alone. We’re all still managing the same kind of feelings of letting people down, inadequacy and insecurity. The challenge is overcoming that. I find myself constantly in these positions on set where I’m like, ‘God, why did I choose to do this? I have no idea how to be this person.’ But that’s the reason why you’re there, to figure it out.”
The fact he’s been doing it so long, Bell says, means he is much more invested in the material. “I have more confidence now to go to a filmmaker and say, ‘I think this can be better,’ or, ‘I want to work harder on this scene,’ and feel like my input is worth something.”
Soon we’ll see Bell’s turn as an executive producer when Teen Spirit – which stars Elle Fanning as a shy, small-town teenager who finds stardom through performing (sound familiar?) – hits cinemas. But this month he’s proving he can still own the screen in Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool. Based on the memoir of the
same name by relatively unknown British actor Peter Turner (played by Bell), it chronicles Turner’s romance with Oscar-winning US actress Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) and her battle with cancer, during which she took retreat at his humble family home in Liverpool.
“When I first read the script, I thought it was a bizarre story,” says Bell, explaining he didn’t know of Grahame, let alone of her unlikely romance with Turner (she was 29 years his senior). “But I came to realise it’s a man reflecting on and trying to make sense of a profound relationship. They both gave each other something they both truly needed. I thought it was a wonderfully strange, heartfelt story that I had never really read before.”
In a very meta casting choice, Julie Walters (who played Billy Elliot’s ballet teacher-cum-mother figure Mrs Wilkinson all those years ago) takes on the role of Turner’s mum in the film. “I think it gives people this subconscious connection to the characters – you believe we’re related in some way beyond just in the film.”
But that doesn’t mean he’ll be taking a trip down memory lane – Bell doesn’t make a habit of watching his finished films. “I can’t handle it,” he says. “I become hypercritical – disapprove of every choice I’ve made. Also, seeing something in a finished state means the creative process is over. I always kind of mourn the chance to change something or make it better. So sometimes it’s just best for me not to look. It’s a never-ending process – you always think the next movie will be great, or the scene I do tomorrow will be better than the one I did today, and it kind of keeps you coming back.”