Jamie Bell is ready to make his move

“A lot of people might have expected me to move out to L.A. and start making studio movies and that kind of thing,” says Jamie Bell, slouched in a chair at a Beverly Hills restaurant, “but that just isn’t me. I’m doing all right.”

Indeed, the working-class teenager from northern England who beat Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe and Geoffrey Rush to win the British Academy of Film and Television Arts best actor trophy for his performance two years ago in “Billy Elliot,” seems to be doing just fine.

Now 16, he’s in town to talk about “Nicholas Nickleby.” Based on Charles Dickens’ novel, the movie that opened Friday stars Charlie Hunnam in the title role, with Bell as the urchin Smike.

Subjected to a lifetime of beatings, the stooped Smike walks with a limp and is trapped in servitude at a school for orphaned boys run by sadistic Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent).

Salvation arrives in the form of kindly young teacher Nicholas Nickleby, who helps Smike escape from Dotheboys Hall. Together they hit the road and briefly hook up with a traveling troupe of actors before joining Nickleby’s family in London.

“The whole physical side of the character was something that really attracted me to the role,” says Bell, dressed in a T-shirt, baggy blue jeans and an Eminem-branded skull cap. “Just from looking at Smike, you get so much information: He’s been beaten, he has no one to love, no one loves him, he’s got no parents, he doesn’t have an education. His deformity has come about not only because of the beatings, but lack of attention and lack of care and all that sort of stuff.”

To prepare, Bell read as much of the novel as he could -- in between final exams at high school -- and watched “The Elephant Man” and “My Left Foot” for inspiration. He also worked with a choreographer to perfect the character’s posture and gait.

“That could be difficult sometimes because the director wanted continuous movement,” Bell says. “He’d say, ‘You look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame!’ Smike’s really learned to deal with it, he’s managed to get on with his life, with this problem, so we had to show that by making his movement as fluid and natural as possible.”

“Nicholas Nickleby” writer-director Douglas McGrath joins his young charge at the table. “Jamie’s part is the heart of the movie, and that’s why it gave me the most concern as I was casting,” he says. “If Smike isn’t right, nothing works. He is why the story is there in the first place, because Smike is the symbol of what neglect from society can do, and what price you pay for that.”

A stellar, seasoned cast

For “Nickleby,” McGrath assembled a stellar cast of seasoned character actors, including Broadbent, Christopher Plummer, Tom Courtenay, Timothy Spall, Alan Cumming and Nathan Lane.

As compelling as Bell was as the blue-collar ballet dancer in “Billy Elliot,” didn’t McGrath worry that the young, untrained actor might be in over his head?

“My only concern was, in ‘Billy Elliot,’ Jamie was the picture of physical perfection, which is what ballet is all about -- achieving the most you can from your body.

“So I thought it was a great twist, but I didn’t know if it was one you wanted to do. Would you be willing now to take that control over all those muscles and bones and use it to achieve imperfection. And I felt it right away when we talked, because I could see how serious he was.

“I knew Jamie had given one brilliant performance in ‘Billy Elliot’ and that’s all I’d seen him in,” McGrath continues. “But the thing I loved about Jamie when we first started working together, everything he did was completely true -- nothing phony or mannered or added on. I’d done lots and lots of auditions, and everybody else was kind of begging all the time, and Jamie wasn’t. He understood that Smike wasn’t about getting pity. It was just about being a survivor.”

“The thing of it is,” Bell adds, “they’ve had all of this training, and I haven’t had any -- I’m just relying on the whole natural talent thing. It’s still a big learning curve for me, so I’m just taking all the best bits that they have and stealing from them and working with it.”

In character, on camera

Broadbent in particular provided a lesson in how to save the performance for the cameras. And for that, Bell jokes that he was grateful.

“Some actors will walk around being their character about 10 minutes before and, thank God, Jim didn’t, because I just would have been getting beaten all the time! Jim is quite reserved, but then suddenly he becomes this almost demonic schoolteacher in a way, and it seems really scary. But it’s an honor to be beaten by Broadbent, it is.”

Bell continues, “Doug said to me when I came into the meeting, ‘I’ve got a rescue dog, and whenever you go up to him, it cowers and moves away.’ So when Nicholas goes up to Smike while he’s reading a book and just leans toward him, Smike flinches, because he’s so used to people coming up and giving him a quick slap around his ears. That’s just something that’s part of his everyday life.”

Those hard knocks give way to a sweet denouement in “Nicholas Nickleby,” when Smike feels the full force of his brotherly bond with Nickleby.

“Dickens was writing ahead of his time in terms of family,” Bell says. “You know, Nathan sums it up in the last scene where he says people we have in our family don’t necessarily have to be blood related. If we love them enough, that’s fine.”

Bell can relate. Deserted by his father as a small child, he was raised in Bellingham, England, by his mother.

While making “Billy Elliot” he informally adopted the film’s director, Stephen Daldry, as his father. “You see the same kind of thing in ‘About a Boy’ as well,” Bell says, “where this man and this kid find each other at a really difficult time in their lives, and by the end of it, they’ve created this whole little family.

“And you know, that’s what happened for me. Without having had that kind of father figure in my life, Stephen came along and we did the movie and we became great friends. It’s not like I suddenly said, ‘Right. I want you to be my dad, so you’re my dad now.’ It’s just a decision that we kind of made together.

“It’s nice because not many people get to choose who they want as their father. Usually you have to get stuck with the first guy that you see. Fortunately for me, I had the luxury of choosing.”

Avoiding being typecast

He also had plenty of professional choices in the wake of “Billy Elliot’s” worldwide success, but most of the projects pigeonholed Bell.

“Immediately afterward, recalls Bell, “the scripts did swarm in

To that end, Bell, who cites Leonardo DiCaprio and Eminem as role models, first played a soldier in “Deathwatch,” a ensemble drama set in the trenches of World War I and scheduled for release next year.

“I’ve been picking things slowly, trying to take something that would sort of shatter the image of ‘Billy Elliot.’ In ‘Deathwatch,’ people who know me as this dancing kid, now I’m going to be dodging shrapnel and they’ll be saying, ‘What’s he doing?’ And they’ll see ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and, you know, just let ‘Billy Elliot’ go.”