Star Interview: Jamie Bell

It's not easy being a child star - just ask Jamie Bell.

Little more than a decade ago he burst into the spotlight in the feel-good smash hit Billy Elliot, charming audiences around the world as the dancing boy wonder.
"The success kind of took over my life for a little while," Bell recalls. "I felt like I was this kid Billy Elliot. I thought, 'Who the f... is Jamie Bell?'

 How time flies.

Speaking from his New York base, Bell is all grown up and seems well adjusted, with a healthy confidence and refreshing frankness. With his latest wave of diverse roles hitting cinema screens in coming months, the 25-year-old Brit clearly isn't losing any sleep over being branded the "ballet boy".

"To be honest, I don't think about it," Bell says. "To think about that stuff means that you're not advancing or that you're kind of stuck in history."

He made the successful transition to young adult roles in WWII dramas Flags Of Our Fathers and Defiance and blockbusters Jumper and King Kong.

As he chats to Insider during a break from working on Manhattan thriller Man On A Ledge, which he is filming with Aussie Sam Worthington, it's clear Bell's star is very much on the rise.

He has scored the title role in Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn.

"To be honest, working with Steven Spielberg was weird," Bell says, "because you would never think that would happen to you. I'd think, 'You've been wanting to do this since you were eight and now it's happening'."

The sure-fire blockbuster is undoubtedly his biggest break since Billy Elliot.

However, first we will see him in action-adventure The Eagle, set in second century Britain.
Bell plays a slave, Esca, who is trying to find out the truth behind the disappearance of the 9th Roman Legion 20 years earlier.

The film was shot in the Scottish Highlands and proved gruelling.

"That was intense and scary. The only thing you can think about doing is trying to get out and surviving," Bell recalls.

He says he has stayed close to his roots.

"I talk in the same northern accent. I'll always do a British film if I can. My loyalty is definitely with the north-east of England, that's what made me. That community's history is part of Billy Elliot."

Bell's down-to-earth nature might explain his discomfort with celebrity.

"The truth is, I'm just a kid from the north east of England who got lucky," he says. "When I'm an older dude I'll look back and go, 'Huh, for the little kid in Billy Elliot, you've achieved quite a lot, bro'."

By James Mitchell. Originally published in The Sunday Telegraph and thetelegraph.com.au, July 2011.