Detailed Biography

Jamie Bell is an English actor. He is perhaps best known for playing the title character in the film Billy Elliot , for which he won the 2001 BAFTA Award for Best Actor.

Biography

Early life

Bell was born in Billingham, in the Borough of Stockton on Tees, England, where he grew up with his mother, Eileen, and older sister Cathriene. Cathriene went to ballet lessons when she was younger and Jamie went with her to her lessons and this is how he came to fall in love with the dance. His father, John Bell, a toolmaker, left before Bell was born. Bell was a pupil at Northfield School, then the Stagecoach Theatre Arts school. He was a member of the National Youth Music Theatre. In 1999, he was chosen from a field of over 2000 boys for the role of Billy Elliot, an 11-year-old boy who dismays his working-class widowed father and older brother by taking up ballet.

Career

Bell acted as Honorary Jury President of the 2001 Giffoni Film Festival. Since his film debut in Billy Elliot, he has appeared as the crippled servant Smike in an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, a young soldier in Deathwatch, a teenager on the run in Undertow, a gun-toting pacifist in Dear Wendy, a disaffected Southern California teenager in The Chumscrubber, and the young Jimmy in the 2005 film version of King Kong. In 2007, he played the title character in Hallam Foe – for which he was nominated for the best actor award at the British Independent Film Awards – and appeared as himself in lonelygirl15 spin-off KateModern.

He had roles in two 2008 films: the sci-fi film Jumper and the World War II drama Defiance. In the latter he plays Asael Bielski , the third of the Bielski Brothers - leaders of a partisan group that saved some 1200 lives during the Holocaust. Despite rumours to the contrary, he did not appear in Thea Sharrock's West End production of Equus.

In 2009, it was announced Bell would play the title role in the motion capture film The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which is currently pencilled in for US release on 23 December 2011.

It has been confirmed that The Eagle of the Ninth will begin filming in August 2009 for a 2010 release. It is believed Bell will take on the role of Esca, a Celtic slave in Roman-occupied Britain, who accompanies his master north of Hadrian's wall to find out what happened to his father's legion.

Bell is a contender for the upcoming major motion picture "Horrorscope," written by Brian Evans. The film is about a psychic named "The Zodiac", who has the power to bring to life the signs of the Zodiac to avenge his own death by the mafia.

Personal life

In 2005 and 2006, Bell dated actress Evan Rachel Wood, with whom he appeared in the music video for Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends".

He currently lives in New York, and also owns a home in Chelsea, London.