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Remember Jamie Bell, the little boy who launched a thousand tutus playing Billy in “Billy Elliot”? Well, get ready to see a lot more of the grown-up version of him soon, because he might be the next James Bond, according to The Sun. Though it’s not a done deal, the child star is in talks to succeed such heavyweights as Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, and Roger Moore in the 007 role.
Turns out that enrolling your children in ballet really pays off, as that is where little Bell (née Andrew James Matfin Bell) got his start on the stage, after going along with his sister to her ballet lessons back in England when he was a wee lad. At 13, he was cast as Billy Elliot, putting that ballet know-how to good use in the film.
And the rest, as they say, is history, as he has popped up in everything from the Green Day video for “Wake Me Up When September Ends” with Evan Rachel Wood when he was 19, to 2011’s “The Adventures of Tintin” (as the voice of Tintin), to the “Fantastic Four” reboot last year (as The Thing, of course). Though he had a long, tumultuous relationship with Wood (with whom he has a two-year-old son) after that fateful vid, he has been in a relationship with Kate Mara since they met on the set of “FF.”
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Bell is on Bond producer Barbara Broccoli’s radar, since he’s starring in her romance “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool,” which starts production in the UK on June 27 and also features Annette Bening and Julie Walters, Variety reports. “Barbara has been a fan of Jamie for a long time and has even thought about him playing another role in the franchise before,” a source told The Sun. “Everyone remembers Jamie as the little boy in Billy Elliott, but he’s now bulked up and got some serious roles under his belt.” He does look a bit like Craig, so if studio heads are going for that, he may have it in the bag.
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Don’t get your panties all in a twist if you’re pulling for someone other than Bell to be the next Bond, though. “Tom Hiddleston and Aidan Turner are still in the frame, but Jamie has really shown that he is definitely up there competing with them,” the source told the publication. Gillian Anderson has also kinda-sorta-not-really-jokingly nominated herself, and rumors have also circled around Idris Elba, Damian Lewis, and James Norton. As an Eon Productions mouthpiece told The Sun, “Barbara regularly speaks to lots of actors, and nothing has been decided yet on Bond.” Whoever it is, it won’t be ol’ blue eyes, though: Craig has apparently turned down a $100 million offer to make a fifth Bond film. As he told CNN last year, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.… We’re done. All I want to do is move on.”
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