Trailer
Plot summary
In 1984, Billy Elliot lives in a County Durham village with his widowed father Jackie, his older brother Tony and his grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease. Jackie and Tony are coal miners on strike over their wage demands, and the mine keeps running with other workers. Jackie sends Billy to the boys' club for boxing lessons, a sport the boy dislikes and does not do well. A ballet class for girls uses the same gym, taught by Sandra Wilkinson, and Billy joins it out of curiosity. Sandra sees his natural talent and his passion, and she believes he could audition for the Royal Ballet School in London. When Jackie finds out about the lessons, he orders Billy to stop taking them.
Cast
- Nicola Blackwellas Debbie
- Carol McGuiganas Librarian
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Billy Elliot (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Thousands of boys were considered for the lead, and Jamie Bell had about seven auditions before being announced in mid-1999; choreographer Peter Darling then worked with him "eight hours a day for three months, finding out what drove him as a dancer."
- Billy Elliot won three of its thirteen nominations at the 54th British Academy Film Awards, and Jamie Bell became the youngest ever winner of the BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
- Gary Lewis met with miners in preparation for filming and said his own experience of the strike made the role enjoyable: "My family and I were very active in supporting the miners: I stood in picket lines, I raised money for the miners."
- The film premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival on 19 May under the title Dancer, and was renamed Billy Elliot to avoid confusion with Dancer in the Dark, another film at Cannes that year.
- Lee Hall developed Billy Elliot from his play Dancer and was heavily influenced by photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's book Step by Step, about a dancing school in nearby North Shields; he wrote in 2009 that "almost every frame of Billy Elliot was influenced by Step by Step."
- Elton John worked with screenwriter Lee Hall on a musical version, which opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in the West End on 31 March 2005 with director Stephen Daldry and choreographer Peter Darling aboard, and ran more than 4,000 performances before closing in April 2016.
