Like many born in the ‘80s, British actor Jamie Bell grew up watching and being inspired by the cartoon television series The Adventures of Tintin based on Herge’s famous comic strips of a bequiffed Belgian reporter and his white terrier Snowy.
While Bell didn’t grow up to become a roving reporter like his idol, he was offered the opportunity to play Tintin in the new Steven Spielberg adaptation, which is produced by Peter Jackson who will direct the sequel. TheVine sat down with Bell, who shot to fame as the ballet dancing kid in Billy Elliot, to talk about working with Spielberg, Jackson and taking on the title role in the 3D motion-capture film adaptation of one of the most popular comics of the 20th century.
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Jamie, hi how are you?
Great, great.
Have you had a long day of interviews?
Look it’s a Spielberg movie, I don’t mind talking about Steven.
How did you get the Tintin role, did you have to fight for it?
Yeah, I mean to a degree. I knew Peter because I worked with him on King Kong and I met Steven when I was 15 to talk about Tintin back when it was going to be a live-action movie, which was a different reincarnation of the project. Anyway, they invited to go down to New Zealand to have a go with the motion-capture technology. I had a couple of days working with Peter and I think my European sensibility, my understanding and knowledge of Tintin, my passion about Tintin and my physical nature as well, was kind of the deciding factor for both of them.
So you’ve been talking about doing this film with Steven for a long time – ten years?
Yeah, we met at Dreamworks back then and he was like ‘Are you okay with being Tintin for the rest of your life?’ and I really appreciated his sincerity and his honesty. I think I respected myself enough to go ‘I don’t know how I feel about that, I’m going to have to think about that.’
Did you have any other reservations about taking on the role?
My only reservation was how they were going to interpret Tintin. I wanted to make sure they weren’t going to make him an American character, that they weren’t going to try and Americanise him.
Despite being one of the most successful comic books of the 20th century, Tintin is barely even known in America, right?
He is completely unknown. They think he’s a dog – like Rintintin – that’s the counterculture problem. Anyway, I was also worried that the technology wasn’t going to be good enough, but having seen a lot of it recently when I did ADR [Additional Dialogue Recording – ie dubbing the voice] and the post-production work, well it’s outrageous, it looks amazing. The level of the technology is just crazy.
How did you find working with motion-capture?
It’s no different from what I’d do on a live-action movie; you’re still in the physical space with the other actors in the scene and you’re still embodying the character and feeling what he feels in a truthful way in the context of the narrative so there’s no real difference. I don’t know what they do with the computers, I’ll let them figure that out because that’s not my job, I just have to perform and once you realise how you perform it’s much easier to wrap your head around the technology.
Did you still have to go through hair and make-up?
No, we just had dots placed specifically and scientifically symmetrically on our face, which covers the muscular articulations of your face. The dots can be tracked on the computer so when they put it on the animated puppet mask it moves in the exact same way as your face moves. There are so many muscles in the face and so many small things that are important to [track via these dots] so that’s really the only kind of make-up we would wear. It’s ridiculous, but necessary.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times already: what was it like working with Spielberg?
For me, it was amazing to be working with him on-set. He loves the idea of youthful exuberance and Tintin is the epitome of that. Tintin is just so Steven Spielberg, you know, to have an action-adventure mixed in with the nostalgia of childhood and of film noir. He’s an incredible filmmaker, obviously I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.
And Jackson?
Oh, PJ, he’s a real pioneer of technology. His sensibilities are incredibly European, which is great for Tintin and his sense of humour and wit is incredible.
What’s your relationship with Tintin, were you a fan of the comic books growing up?
I watched the cartoons on Channel 4 when I was growing up and with that it offered me the opportunity to live vicariously through this character of Tintin. With this movie, I really wanted to offer that same thing to people in their bedrooms in Texas or wherever they are – Perth – to get across this idea of ‘Wow, this guy is doing this stuff that I really want to do – like travel and adventure and solving political problems.’”
Where was it shot?
We did two weeks in New Zealand, and eight weeks in LA at Giant studios, which was the bain of my existence for a while.
Why was that?
Just because you’re going to the same place every single day. Motion-capture films kind of feel like an office job. On a usual film, you’re used to moving from location to location, you’re outside then you’re inside and you’re in a different country and then this country. But with motion-capture, you’re in the same space every single day and that kind of wears you down because the shooting is very hectic on a motion-capture film.
How did you find NZ?
Great, you know I’ve spent a lot of time there with Kong and stuff, it was good to go back and see all my friends down there in windy Wellington. I know Wellington very well, I love the pop art museum and Cuba St is kinda cool. I wish I could do more travelling around, but when you’re working it’s very difficult and most of the time that I’m there I’m working.
What was the mood like on-set?
It felt like we were making something that is fun and adventurous and we did feel like we were breaking ground with this technology, like we’re doing something that is not ordinary and we’re pioneering this technology. That side of things was great and fun, and plus you’re constantly watching and listening to Steven Spielberg, which is amazing. It was like a crash-course in filmmaking, it was great.
Is Tintin – this action-adventure story – the sort of film you dreamed of making as a kid?
I would pretend to run around and be a hero, I definitely wanted to be Batman when I was a kid. How good was Tim Burton’s Batman [he says referring to my Tim Burton tattoo]. I grew up watching the most weird films, like Bloodsport, Robocop, Kickboxer, like all these very violent films which is so not me at all. Then I eventually fell in love with Burton and Spielberg and Eastwood and all these really great filmmakers, Hitchcock, Tarantino.
By Kelly Griffin