Jamie Bell: the eternal orphan

Billy Elliot turned him into a ‘brat’. But playing Tintin, in Steven Spielberg’s eye-popping new film, has made Jamie Bell realise what he really is – a lost child.

 Jamie Bell had to get a grip. There he was, the star of Billy Elliot, an unknown 15 year-old from a ­single-parent family in Billingham, Teesside, who beat hundreds of other wannabes to play the working class boy who loved ballet in the 2000 film. He won a Bafta; Russell Crowe was his new best friend. What was not to like? Himself, it seems.

“I lost my mind at 15,” says Bell of his hype-induced meltdown. He went back to school and managed to finish his GCSEs. But, “I’d been shown a world where there were no boundaries, where everyone gave me all the power. And I was like, ‘This is great!’ Then that was gone. But I was like, ‘Yeah, but I still want that.’ I’d lost my humble, very quiet, introverted sensibilities which I think I definitely had as a kid. And I…” Became a brat?

“Yeah, I became a little a-------,” he smiles. “And, you know, you’re a 15-year-old kid so it’s your world. And I was a b------ at 16! But still, looking back on it now, it was worry­ing because it is very persuasive, and you have all these grown-ups who it seems are encouraging it. And that’s unhealthy.” But unlike so many child stars before him, Bell’s spin-out was short-lived.

His mother, his manager and Stephen Daldry, the Billy Elliot director who became the mentor and father figure that Bell had never had, helped steer him right. (Bell has never had contact with his father, who left before he was born.) He chose parts in a few indie films, and turned down parts in American teen movies, “which focused on me as a kid. I wanted to still be a kid, but I came from the north east of England. I didn’t really sympathise or empathise with those kinds of characters.” And so he quietly got on with building a decent career as an actor. The rampaging ego retreated.

Since then he’s had a busy, buzzy career working with edgy(ish) directors such as Carey Fukunaga (in last month’s Jane Eyre), Kevin MacDonald (in spring’s The Eagle), David Mackenzie (in 2007’s Hallam Foe) and Thomas Vinterberg (in 2005’s Dear Wendy) as well as marquee names like Clint Eastwood (Flags of our Fathers) and Peter Jackson (King Kong). But he is still, to many cinemagoers, That Kid Who Was In Billy Elliot. So when, a couple of years ago, he was asked to call to try out for the lead in a blockbusting superhero franchise, he thought he’d be a fool to say no.

Sandrine Rottier

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