Actor and dancer Jamie Bell played the lead role in Billy Elliot, which was his debut screen role and led him to be one of the youngest ever winners of the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
The star celebrates his 36th birthday today (March 14), so Daily Star is taking it all the way back to where it all started for him.
The film was released in September 2000 and was a huge commercial success which raked up a massive $109,280,263 (£83.8m) despite smaller expectations.
While Jamie has gone on to have a successful career and full family life, his co-stars haven’t always had it quite as good.
Here, we take a look at what Jamie and his co-stars have been up to in the years that followed the film.
Jamie Bell
(Image: Getty Images)
Jamie Bell went on to land huge film roles in movies such as The Adventures of Tintin, Fantastic Four, King Kong, Snowpiercer and Elton John’s biopic Rocketman.
He married actress Evan Rachel Wood in 2012, with the couple meeting after they starred in Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends music video in 2005.
Jamie and Evan have a son together, who was born in 2013, and a year later they announced their separation.
By late 2015, Jamie was dating his Fantastic Four co-star Kate Mara, and they got engaged in January 2017.
They announced they had got married in July 2017 and welcomed a daughter together in May 2019.
Julie Walters
(Image: Getty Images)
Acting legend Julie Walters was cast to play Billy Elliot’s hard-working ballet teacher and she did not disappoint.
During her role as Sandra Wilkinson she taught the young hopeful how to dance and encouraged him to join the Royal Ballet School.
Sandra quickly became one of the most iconic characters in the film, but outside of Billy Elliot, Julie has had a very impressive career.
She began acting in the mid-eighties, with her breakout role opposite Michael Caine in Educating Rita.
Since then, she has gone on to bring life to the roles of Molly Weasley in Harry Potter, the Witch in Disney Pixar’s Brave, Rosie in Mamma Mia and more recently housekeeper Ellen in Mary Poppins Returns.
Julie has won a Laurence Olivier Award, BAFTA Awards and an Oscar nomination.
In 2018 the actress was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer which meant that she had to miss the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again premier, but she did not publicly announce her illness until 2020.
She said then that she would be taking a step back from demanding acting roles, but would make an exception for roles she was “really engaged” with, such as Mamma Mia 3!, which is development.
Gary Lewis
(Image: Getty Images)
Gary Lewis played Billy’s father, a man struggling to manage the mining strike alongside a son who wanted to pursue a ballet dancing career.
His gut-wrenching performance landed him a BAFTA nomination and the star has since gone on to take part in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York, Eragon and Outlander.
In recent years, he has had roles in television series including It’s A Sin, Vigil and His Dark Materials.
Adam Cooper
(Image: mradamcooper/Instagram)
Adam Cooper undertook the role of adult Billy in Billy Elliot, but has found himself in financial difficulty during recent times.
He has a musical theatre background and has been part of the esteemed Matthew Bourne’s dance company, from which he gained his initial popularity.
Cooper played the swan in Bourne’s production of Swan Lake and later reprised that role for Billy Elliot.
Adam struggled throughout the Covid-19 pandemic as the creative industries took a hit: “I had to apply for universal credit. It was devastating.”
The dancer didn’t qualify for the government’s furlough scheme and he was left trying to make ends meet as the pandemic ravaged through the lives of so many performers.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
