Saved by the Bell

What on earth is the matter with Jamie Bell? At 19, having spent the past two years beavering away on low-key but hipster indies such as Undertow, Chumbscrubber and Dear Wendy, he’s just been re-drafted into The Greatest Show On Earth, Peter Jackson’s swooningly anticipated King Kong.
Yes I know the trailer is already in cinemas, but the Lord Of The Rings director apparently has more tricks in his bag for us to see.
With all this attention, you might at least expect the teenager to be a bit of a brat.
He is, after all, a former child star, a profession second only to Motown artists as a source of car-crash celebrity tales.
Having precociously hoofed his way into the title role of Billy Elliot back in 2000, shouldn’t he be swinging from chandeliers with Colin Farrell by now or making, um, specialised videos with Paris Hilton?
But no. Not even a little bit. Instead of providing boozy where-are-they-now distractions for the discerning readers of Heat magazine, young Mr. Bell proves a sound, well-adjusted and pathologically jolly lad with less interest in the blandishments of celebrity than in his iPod, DVDs and the fortunes of Arsenal FC.
“Nightmare!” he starts, when the subject of Tom Cruise on Oprah rears its toothy head. “I mean, good for him and all that stuff, but can you imagine facing your mates afterwards?”
Not that Bell has ever been cowed by peer pressure. Growing up in Teeside, a north-eastern English district not renowned for dainty tastes, he was the token boy in a household of dancers comprising his teenage mother, grandmother and sisters ( his father having disappeared from the scene early on).
Though Bell’s genetic aptitude for ballet attracted such predictably witty taunts as ‘poof’ and ‘ballerina boy’, he toughed it out, taking lessons while classmates went to football training.
Developing a thick hide paid off when the much lauded Billy Elliot brought his twinkle toes to international prominence.
“It just happened,” he recalls. “It was a bit freaky suddenly seeing yourself on billboards and there was a lot of slagging, but at the end of the day I thought, well at least I’m doing something to be up there.”
John Wayne fans may recall that the Duke himself took ballet lessons – all the better to swagger out through doorways – and while Bell’s career has not since offered a showcase for his shoe-work, there’s a rare physical awareness in his performances.
The gangly boy soldier of Deathwatch, the buckled Smike from Nicholas Nickleby and the hog-farmer’s son sloop of Undertow have given way to young buck posturing in Dear Wendy, the current cinema offering from Dogme graduate Thomas Vinterberg.
An exhilarating nouveau western, Dear Wendy marries piquant political allegory to swain romance as Bell and his flamboyant band of outsiders become increasingly enraptured with their firearms.
Bell understandably relished the role, with its ready-made iconography pitched somewhere between James Dean and Dick Turpin, but admits to feeling somewhat intimidated by the notoriously loopy Danes, Messrs. Vinterberg and von Trier (who wrote the screenplay).
“They are a bit intense, especially Lars who really enjoys being that way, and isn’t the best at communicating things. But if they’re intense it’s because they’re enthusiastic and passionate about what they’re doing. I think I coped a bit better than some of the Americans did. They’re weren’t really ready for Lars’ naked swimming pools.”
If Bell has impeccable taste in scripts that’s probably because he watches all the right movies.
While he finds plenty of excitement in contemporary cinema (“Wasn’t Tarnation the most amazing experience?” he gushes rightly) he’s a huge fan of post-classical Hollywood.
“I love films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I love Bonnie And Clyde ­and Badlands. Terence Malick is my favourite filmmaker. Everything he does is incredible.”
By happy coincidence, Malick acted as executive producer on spiritual heir David Gordon Green’s Undertow, a swampy reworking of Night Of The Hunter, which earned Jamie a Best Young Artist award.
“I’ve done four movies in a row using American accents,” explains Jamie. “And the southern one was definitely a challenge. You had to keep it in mind all the time while also trying to perform. But Undertow is the kind of film I love. I’ve no interest in doing the Hollywood stuff. I like getting back to Teeside to hang out with my mates and I don’t have the teeth for L.A. anyway.”
Once Peter Jackson is done monkeying around in New Zealand, Jamie heads for Iceland (via Teeside, of course) and Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima epic Flags Of Our Fathers.
“I can’t wait,” he chirps. “It’s going to be amazing! It’d be exciting enough going to Reykjavik, but it’s a huge epic war movie directed by Clint Eastwood. I reckon he might even be taller than Kong!”
Yeah, but he can’t be any scarier than the Danes.