At 14, debut actor Jamie Bell is carrying the Oscar hopes of the British film industry on his small shoulders. Bell's ability to charm and dance has made director Stephen Daldry's musical-fantasy Billy Elliot into an indie film phenomenon. It's amazing how one tiny dancer can make moviegoing audiences break into tears.
Billy Elliot's fantasy centers around an 11-year-old boy who sees ballet as his ticket out of the grim, northeast England mining town he calls home. Its clichés aside, Billy Elliot is essentially about one boy's dreams and his fight against his widowed father to achieve them. In the midst of the film's publicity whirlwind, Bell has his own dreams to consider.
"I'm back at school," says Bell, speaking at this year's Toronto Film Festival. "But now, the kids at school think I'm rich. But I want to be a dancer and an actor. I want to do both."
The film kicks into inspirational gear whenever Bell leaps into another acrobatic dance number. It doesn't matter if Billy is bouncing on his bed to the tunes of a T. Rex song, or stomping through the alley to The Jam's "A Town Called Malice," Billy's dancing shoves the film into a feel-good direction. Granted, Billy Elliot (courtesy of Lee Hall's script) has more than its share of clunky melodrama, but Bell's impassioned dancing is impossible to resist. Still, the phenomenal success of the film has caught its director by surprise.
"I think the idea of art being central to one's life and a means of self-expression, whatever the art is -- and in this film it's dancing -- that idea of art as a means of getting out is a powerful and important message," says Daldry. "But I can't say that we made it in the context of thinking about its commercial viability. I don't think we did. We made it for ourselves. It's still a shock that people like it."
Two thousand auditions were held throughout northern England in search of the right Billy. At the time, Bell was only 12 and spending his Sundays studying acting and dance at a local drama club. It took seven try-outs before he won the part. Like the film itself, the whole experience seems like an impossible dream.
"I think the auditioning process was pretty good," Bell says. "I like being under pressure. The auditions went on all day. I would read from the script and dance from 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon."
In person, Bell looks different from Billy. He's taller and his voice is lower. Bell is more young man than little boy. Still, his tousled hair, gangly build and freckled cheeks look straight out of the Billy Elliot scrapbook. Basically, it's difficult to completely separate Bell from his Billy Elliot character.
While Billy's chain-smoking ballet teacher (Julie Walters) watches, the pint-sized Gene Kelly glides across the boxing gym's floor. His acrobatic energy is infectious. During those moments when Bell isn't swinging his arms and legs, he captures the sense of teen awkwardness that's so integral to the spirit of the movie. For Billy Elliot, it wasn't enough that Bell possessed nimble feet. He had to act, too.
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"I'm a dancer who acts," Bell says. "The acting was more of a challenge for me. But the film's not just about dancing. It's a real story about dads and their families."
Any teary-eyed audience member will tell you that it's impossible to imagine anyone other than Bell as Billy Elliot. His performance is that perfectly matched with the film. If Billy Elliot is destined to turn Ball into a child star, it's hard to predict what his future choices might be. There aren't a lot of movie musicals on the horizon. An Oscar nomination would boost Bell's profile even further. Still, that's a question best left to the showbiz pundits. For now, it's important to bask in the cinematic image of Bell's lively dancing. Every time Bell leaps off the rooftops and sprints through the alleys, his dream is rekindled in front of a new audience of moviegoers. ©
