The sweet Bell of success

Growing up, it transpires, is hard to do. When last we met, Jamie Bell was in the middle of shooting Peter Jackson’s King Kong and seemed well on the way to outgrowing the child star status his title role in Billy Elliot had bestowed upon him. Or so we thought.

“It’s weird,” says the 21-year-old. “I mean, most people are like ‘hey, what you up to’ or whatever. But there’s always one. I’ll be walking down the street and someone will walk up and start talking to me like I’m five. ‘Aren’t you Billy Elliot? Why do you look bigger and stretched out?’ It’s like they want to feed me hormones and keep me as a little boy forever.”
While it has never been suggested that Jamie Bell could be the male Li-lo or Paris Hilton, the British press have, evidently, had some difficulty with the young Billingham boy’s transition into adulthood. Not long after I had to use a secret password to track him down on Kong, (you had to keep saying ‘bad monkey’ at the start of every sentence to get past protective Wingnut staff) various red-tops threw hissy fits over a photograph of Jamie holding – gasp – a glass of vodka.
“Yes, I know,” he nods. “That was really shocking. The nineteen-year-old in alcoholic drink scandal. I can only apologise.”
More recently, he had his metaphorical (and sometimes actual) bins rifled through when his girlfriend of two years, Evan Rachel Wood, left him for Marilyn Manson.
“You just learn to be really careful about talking to people,” Jamie says. “Anything you say to anyone can be misquoted and used against you so it’s just best to stay quiet about it. I have the same friends now that I’ve always had and that keeps me sane. But I try to never read anything that’s written about me. I just divorce myself completely from that stuff.”
Despite these possible setbacks, Mr. Bell has been slowly and steadily working his way up his chosen greasy pole. In addition to playing opposite the giant monkey, he has won leading roles in Clint Eastwood’s elegiac epic Flags Of Our Fathers and Doug Liman’s forthcoming time-travel caper Jumper.
“I just have a great manager and great agents,” explains Jamie. “They’re kind of like brilliant Rottweilers. They’ve very good at filtering. Because I get really depressed when I’ve read a stack of shit scripts. But Doug was great. And Clint was even more amazing than you’d think. He’s been in the business so long he’s a very ‘let’s do it’ kind of guy. He’s not a big collaborator. He hires you because he likes your work and expects you to turn up and do a good job. It’s fascinating to be on set just to see how commanding he is, how much everyone respects him. When you first meet him it’s terrifying but then he kicks back and starts sharing stories or whatever. And as a young actor, it’s great to watch. It shows that you can be the most respected person in Hollywood without being an arsehole to get what you want.”
Though Messrs. Eastwood and Jackson have brought the young star to a wider audience, Jamie Bell has been careful to seek out the great luminaries of alternative cinema. For Dear Wendy he found himself in the company of director Thomas Vinterberg and producer Lars Von Trier. Undertow saw him working alongside David Gordon Green and Terrence Malick.
“I don’t know how I’ve managed it,” laughs Jamie. “I’ve had a fantastic two years. Literally I went from Lars to Gordon to Clint. I made a list three years ago of the people I most wanted to work with and they’re all on it. I’m just blessed, I guess.”
And the hits just keep on coming. Today, it seems rather appropriate that we’re meeting against the colourful backdrop of the Edinburgh fringe festival. That great city is home to the tale of Hallam Foe, director David Mackenzie’s follow-up to such noted tartan noirs as The Last Great Wilderness and Young Adam. Hallam concerns the adventures and misadventures of a teenage voyeur (Bell) struggling to cope with the death of his mother, the arrival of a hated new stepmother and a conspiratorial imagination. As his tendencies to peep spiral out of control he takes off for the city where Sophia Myles’s hotel administrator may or may not be his salvation.
“Hallam is fucked up, but he’s also really sweet and old-fashioned,” says Jamie. “I like that he’s really feral and uninhibited. He sees a girl he likes and he walks straight up to her. And I had to learn how to climb across all these gothic rooftops to look through windows. I never had the urge to climb a tree as a kid. I was always off at dance class.”
The film has already wowed audiences at the Berlin Film Festival and at Edinburgh, where it opened the festival. I wonder though if young Mr. Bell wouldn’t ever be tempted to go off and play Batman or something less demandingly psychological.
“Ha! Of course I want to be Batman,” he smiles. “Every boy wants to be Batman. In LA they see me as a freak. They always ask me why I’m appearing in all these weird films, doing weird things. But at the same time I don’t want to be perceived as the guy who is Batman. And I don’t like the idea of being swept up into a marketing machine and sold off as lunch boxes. The great thing about Christian (Bale) doing it is that, actually, he’s a very good actor. And he started when he was 12. He held back for so long and judged everything perfectly so that now he can work with whoever he wants.”
Remind you of anyone else?

Hallam Foe is released August 31.