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Video: Jamie Bell on Jimmy Kimmel Live! December 14th

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4 Must See Videos of Jamie Bell on Herby.tv

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#1: Jamie Bell on the Red Carpet, Montreal
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#2: A Casual Interview with Jamie
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#3: Tintin and Prince in the same Hotel
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#4: Jamie at the Prince Concert
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Playing Tintin fulfils Jamie Bell's childhood dream. Actor brings his dance training to the movie...

By T'CHA DUNLEVY, The Gazette December 9, 2011

MONTREAL - The last time I saw Jamie Bell on screen, he was playing a violent, deadly diseaseinfected soldier in Carl Tibbets's claustrophobic thriller Retreat, which screened at the Fantasia Film Festival in July.

It's hard to believe that's the same guy as the affable actor who greeted me at the plush St. James Hotel last week to discuss his equally unrecognizable role as the good-natured, tirelessly upbeat and distinctly cartoonish title character in The Adventures of Tintin.

Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson's animated blockbuster hits screens Friday in Quebec, 12 days before the rest of North America, as part of a gradual release strategy aimed at building hype stateside.

Unlike American audiences, the British-born Bell needed no introduction to Tintin:

"I love this character," he said. "Since I was 8 years old, I've been following his adventures with great enthusiasm. I really loved the spirit of Tintin, his relationships with people and what he stood for. He's a beacon of excellence for young people.

"I really respected him, because I felt like (Tintin author) Hergé really respected his audience. He took (kids) places, showed them real issues and really shared things with them."

Tintin isn't the only icon of his youth that Bell reconnected with on this project. Working with Spielberg was a chance to collaborate with the man who gave the actor his earliest experience with the big screen.

"Steven was my gateway into movies," Bell said. "The first film I saw in the theatre was Jurassic Park. I was in awe and amazed and terrified - everything you want to be as a kid. It was the greatest ride of my life."

A great ride is an apt description of The Adventures of Tintin. Spielberg acquired the film rights from Hergé shortly before the artist's death in 1983, but held off on doing anything until he found a way to convey the magic of Hergé's comic books.

Enter co-producer Peter Jackson, who proposed the solution with his motioncapture technology. They recruited Bell, motion-capture veteran Andy Serkis (who suited up to play Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong in Jackson's 2005 remake) as Tintin's pal Captain Haddock, and Bond-man Daniel Craig as evil pirate Red Rackham.

All three donned special body suits and hashed it out for six weeks in a dark room in L.A.'s Culver City.

The result is an enchanting journey that - though it drags a bit in the second half - does a generally commendable job of making even grown-ups feel like kids again.

Playing Tintin was a childhood dream come true for Bell, but it provided a challenge for him as an actor.

"I jumped back into that 8-year-old (me) with great enthusiasm," he said.

"I read through all 23 (Hergé) adventures. But the problem I hit was, 'I don't know who (Tintin) is. I don't know anything about him. I know he's Tintin the great adventurer, the intrepid reporter who is curious, fearless and has great heroic instincts - but what's his last name?

"How can he afford his own apartment? Why is his only friend a dog? Why does he hang out with an alcoholic? He writes for a newspaper, but nothing ever appears in print. These are really specific questions which for an actor will define how you approach the role."

In the end, Bell realized that there were no answers to his questions, and perhaps that's the point. The fact that Tintin is a blank slate is central to his appeal.

"The reason he's so successful is because he's a mystery," Bell said. "The more he's a mystery, the more you can project what you want him to be, or what you want to be. For me as an actor researching this, you can't answer those questions. It's not my responsibility."

So he left all the good lines to his boisterous (and frequently inebriated) pal Captain Haddock and concentrated on the simplicity of his role as humble hero. Along the way, he was drawn to what Tintin most obviously is - a man of action.

"Tintin is a very physical character," he said. "The way Hergé drew him, he is always very much on the move. When he thinks about something, he strikes a pose; and when he's down talking to (his dog) Snowy, he's in a very specific position.

"For me, it was about creating that sense of dynamics through a physicality that was explosive. Being a dancer for so long definitely helped."

Bell has danced since the age of 6, getting his acting start as a boy ballerina in the 2000 film Billy Elliot. He used that experience on the set, which Spielberg had plastered with Tintin images.

"We would look at panels from the comic book and go, 'Let's do that pose now,' " Bell said. "Those physical elements were crucial to the entire makeup of the character."

It was all part of the bigger picture, which was paying tribute to the man behind the original Tintin stories.

"(Spielberg) wanted it to be a Hergé adventure, nothing else," Bell said. "I think that's what he did, in his own way. I think as filmmakers - as artists, as composers of images - Hergé and Steven are not too dissimilar."

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is playing in Montreal and opens in the rest of Canada later this month.

tdunlevy@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/tchadunlevy
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette


Jamie Bell, who plays Tintin in The Adventures of Tintin, read all the Tintin comic books as a youngster and says playing the intrepid boy reporter provided a challenge for him. He was in Montreal last week to promote the film, which is open now in Montreal. (Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf, The Gazette)

Tintin Type: Spotlight on Jamie Bell in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair

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Tintin Type

By Laura Jacobs Photograph by Doug Inglish

Spotlight
January 2012

A foundation in dance is not a bad thing for an actor. Back in the day, at New York City’s Neighborhood Playhouse, the likes of Gregory Peck, Eli Wallach, Joanne Woodward, and Marian Seldes took classes from America’s high priestess of modern dance, Martha Graham. “The body says what words cannot,” Graham decreed, and she was right. Case in point: Jamie Bell. As a dance-trained youngster, he leapt to stardom with his role in the 2000 film Billy Elliot, poignant as the shy boy with jug ears who loves to dance. He won that year’s BAFTA Award for best actor—at 14! Shortly thereafter, young Bell met with Steven Spielberg, who was planning to make a live-action movie based on the beloved Belgian comic-book series “The Adventures of Tintin.” Although the project didn’t move forward, Bell did, working on other movies with major filmmakers—Peter Jackson, Clint Eastwood, and Spielberg among them. And then The Adventures of Tintin caught up with Bell. Spielberg and Jackson came together and decided the film should be animated, using performance-capture technology as part of the process. Bell was called to New Zealand to have a go at the new technology, and was again offered the role. “The character’s a very physical one,” he says. “So because of my dance background there was something about that kind of expression in me that I think they were looking for.” Meanwhile, in the live-action thriller Man on a Ledge, to be released a month after Tintin, look for the dance moves Bell throws into the mix. He has not outgrown Billy—or those charming ears.

Jamie Bell, all grown up, photographed in Los Angeles.

Jamie Bell on The Adventures of Tintin Tour in Toronto and Montreal

Jamie Bell on 680 News

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Jamie Bell during his stay at the Hotel St. James in Montreal
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Assorted photos of Jamie during the Canadian Tintin tour...

For Your Consideration: 'The Adventures of Tintin' - Best Animated Feature, Best Picture Of The Year

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Jamie in the January 2012
VANITY FAIR