The Bell epoch

READING the script of Hallam Foe, Jamie Bell knew that this could be the part that finally banished memories of Billy Elliot. "Literally on the first page where it says 'Hallam removes his shirt and rings his nipples with red lipstick', I was like 'yes, I guess that's going to do that for me'."

The tap-dancing youngster from Billingham, who was propelled into the public consciousness as the ballet dancing miner's son, has grown up. He's come a long way since those heady days when he beat the likes of Russell Crowe to win a Bafta best actor award for Billy Elliot and was feted in Hollywood.

Not only has he moved home from Teesside to New York, but his career has proved that child stars don't have to end up in rehab or the dole queue. If he's succumbed to the temptations on offer to teenagers, he's had the decency to do it out of the range of the paparazzi and gossip columnists.

Billy was a tough Northern kid rather like Bell, raised by his single mother and whose dancing classes made him stand out from other boys, just as Billy's ballet lessons made him different.

Bell's post-Billy career is a masterclass in handling success and a career. At 21, he's ready to show cinema audiences he's a man not a boy. Hallam Foe's adult themes, sex scenes, dirty talk and nudity are a clear signal that Billy is behind him.

He's conscious people might be surprised at the change in him. "This country, in particular, would be into that because people still hold that movie so close to their hearts. When people see me ringing my nipples with lipstick, I don't know what they'll think."

Meeting him again, nearly a decade after he first became involved with the Billy Elliot project, you're aware you're talking to a mature young man, charming even, and lacking the arrogance adopted by many in his shoes.

After big roles in independent movies, like Dear Wendy, or supporting roles in big movies, including Peter Jackson's King Kong remake and Clint Eastwood's Second World War movie, Flags Of Our Fathers, Hallam Foe marks his first starring role in a British movie since Billy. "You have to wait for the right thing," says Bell.

"There were a couple of things I could have done but it just seemed appropriate to hold out for a little while. And there aren't many people like director David Mackenzie in this country. In America, there are tons - cool, independent guys who make these very hip, fashion-conscious in a way and very stylish movies."

Troubled teen Hallam hangs out in a hut in the woods and spies on people with binoculars. He becomes fixated on a woman who resembles his mother and spends his time clambering over the rooftops of Edinburgh peering into windows.

Bell tends to choose projects for the director more than anything, perhaps resulting from his Billy Elliot experience when director Stephen Daldry became almost a surrogate father and whose advice was valuable in choosing future projects.

"I look up to directors. I just find directing fascinating. I'll always sit down to listen to why they're doing something. To have this overall perspective of an idea and a project takes a lot of vision," says Bell, who'd like to direct one day.

Making Hallam Foe was physically hard with all the climbing trees and scampering over rooftops. "The beautiful nightmare" he dubbed it. "I tried to get in touch with my inner childhood because I never climbed trees, I was always at dancing school. So it was interesting to get back to that very boyish, primal, see-something-and-climb-it mentality, which isn't me."

He took the voyeurism theme seriously. Knowing little about the subject, he turned peeping Tom. "In New York, I was spying with binoculars on different people. They don't seem to have blinds or curtains, it's so easy to look into someone's house," he says.

"It's kind of creepy but there's something fascinating and when you're doing it, you wonder who's watching you. Voyeurism is mainstream culture now. We watch Big Brother on TV all the time, we're obsessed with whatever other people are doing. And actors are used to being looked at."

The sex scenes, which he found "pretty uncomfortable", were one of the hardest parts of playing Hallam. "This is my first time doing the sex stuff on screen. I was conscious of that but know that David's done it in his other films and he's very stylish and classy with it. I felt safe with him and, doing this particular character, it's not like it just happens. It's something that's very important to him, from an innocent's eye."

He found himself having to do a Scottish accent in Scotland surrounded by Scottish people. As someone who's done a string of American roles, he's used to putting on a different voice. His own accent now is located somewhere in mid-Atlantic as Teesside clashes with American.

"There's something very nerve-wracking when you're doing an accent and shooting in the place you're supposed to come from. You feel self-conscious, and you don't want to let them down," he explains. "In a small US film called Undertow I did, we were shooting in Savannah and I'm doing an accent from there - I'm a kid from Billingham trying to recreate their accent, there's something so scary about that."

Proving himself after Billy Elliot's success must have been terrifying too, although Bell's level-headed approach is paying off. He immersed himself in small US films about "messed up young people", saying: "It's a consistent theme in all the work I do. These kids have issues and are trying to work through something. It's just doing stuff you feel passionate about and balancing that with the studio movies you go and do. It's show business, it can't all be about small independent movies."

So far this year he's turned down everything he's been offered which, he says, makes the industry view him "as this kid who's very picky and choosy". He's prepared to accept that. "They can't place it yet, you're English and what does that limit you to - period drama?

"In America, if an actor's offered a studio movie, he takes it. I don't. That's different and sets you apart. I realised it's very easy to become a movie star. I'd rather people say 'hey, you were good in that Hallam Foe movie, rather than, you were very good in that killer vine movie, that really stupid big movie'."

Working with Lord Of The Rings mastermind Peter Jackson and the man he calls just Clint (and we know as Clint Eastwood) was the attraction on those projects, not necessarily the role. "I'd have been a dead boy on the beach to work with Clint," he adds.

He could have cashed in on Billy Elliot's success and done a Hollywood dance movie, but if he had, tells me, "You probably wouldn't have heard of me again."

He settled in New York as opposed to Hollywood as his experience of Los Angeles on the Billy promotional trail wasn't good. He told journalists the place was terrible and full of fake people. "I realise now it was just weird for me being a kid out of Billingham. In LA, the entertainment industry is the main industry, whereas up North it's steel or coal. I didn't understand that then, now I get it," he says.

He doesn't get back to the North-East as often as he should, although points out he's not lived there since he was 14. "It's a great place and puts a lot of things in perspective. There's definitely something about the way people think up there that I miss."

His lifestyle in New York is relaxed when he's not working - "play guitar, see friends, shoot a lot of stupid movies and that's about it" - and the location couldn't be better. "It's between London and LA, that's the best place to be because it's the middle of everywhere."

* Hallam Foe (18) opens in cinemas on Friday.