FILM · 2000 · UK
Billy Elliot
30 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (30)
- #001
One of the biggest concerns during the making of the film was whether Mrs Wilkinson would appear in the final scene, in which Billy performs Swan Lake. In the end, Dame Julie Walters was not available for the shoot.
- #002
Cinematographer Brian Tufano deliberately shot the mining village in a claustrophobic style to emphasise how close-knit the community was and how frustrating that could be for a creative talent like Billy. In the dance scenes, however, he opened up the focus area to show how liberating dance was for Billy.
- #003
Jamie Bell was going through puberty during the shoot. Because his voice broke, some of his dialogue had to be dubbed afterwards. The opening scene, in which he bounces up and down on the bed to T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer", was shot over a long period. By the reshoots, Bell had hair on his legs and had to have it shaved.
- #004
A January 2020 New York Times article about Matthew Bourne's final touring production of "Swan Lake" profiled the four male dancers in the show. Three of the four men (aged between 22 and 34 when the article was published) said Billy Elliot had a major influence on their interest in dance and their decision to become dancers; the article noted that none of the men "experienced much prejudice when they started dancing, perhaps because of what [former Guardian dance critic Judith] Mackrell calls the 'Billy Elliot effect'."
- #005
When Sir Elton John first saw the film at the Cannes Film Festival, he immediately put the idea of making a stage musical of it to director Stephen Daldry.
- #006
In an interview, screenwriter Lee Hall said: "I wrote 'Billy Elliot' when I was still a novice playwright. I was trying to find a way of telling my own story visually. The first image that came to me was a boy bouncing up and down on a bed the way I used to. Once I had that part, everything to do with dance suddenly emerged."
- #007
The ballet Billy performs in the final scene is Matthew Bourne's version of "Swan Lake", in which all the Swans are played by men. Billy is dancing the Swan role that he argued about with Mrs Wilkinson (Dame Julie Walters) earlier in the film.
- #008
Jamie Bell has been dancing since he was six years old.
- #009
The film is set between 1984 and 1985 and in 1999.
- #010
More than two thousand boys auditioned for the role of Billy Elliot.
- #011
Dame Julie Walters had no ballet experience before this film. Admittedly, she went through menopause during the shoot and therefore struggled with the movements and with hot flushes. She felt it made her look like the hippo in Fantasia (1940).
- #012
Much of Easington Colliery, where most of the shoot took place, was demolished shortly after the film was finished, including the house that served as Billy's home and the surrounding street.
- #013
The production shot at a coal mine operating in Ellington, England. This meant they could use all the facilities of a real mine without having to recreate anything for the film. The mine finally closed completely in 2005.
- #014
A 2012 article in London's Evening Standard profiled nineteen-year-old dancer Liam Mower, who had come full circle as a result of the film. Seeing the film as a small boy inspired Mower to become a dancer, and he particularly aspired to perform in New Adventures Dance Company's all-male production of Swan Lake, the ballet that the adult Billy performs at the end of the film. As a child, Mower took on the role of Billy Elliot in the London production of the stage musical adaptation of Billy Elliot. Later, at nineteen, Mower joined New Adventures, where (as of 2015) he danced in ballets including The Nutcracker!, Sleeping Beauty, Edward Scissorhands and Swan Lake. Mower also returned to the London stage musical to play the "Adult Billy" in the dream ballet of Billy Elliot the Musical Live (2014).
- #015
The musical version of the film, which opened in the West End in 2005 to glowing reviews and received numerous awards and nominations, reportedly cost £5.5 million to produce: about £3 million more than the film version. Moreover, the Broadway production cost $18 million to mount, more than three times the film's budget. All three were financially successful.
- #016
The project struck a particular chord with producer Jon Finn because his grandfather was a miner. In fact, a large part of his mother's family worked in the mines in the area where filming took place. Like Billy Elliot, he was the first in his family to leave to study elsewhere.
- #017
On a budget of £3 million, it grossed more than £109 million internationally.
- #018
It is the only film that year to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar but not for Best Picture.
- #019
The Broadway production of the "Billy Elliot" musical opened at the Imperial Theatre on 13 November 2008, played 1,312 performances and won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Musical. It closed on 8 January 2012.
- #020
The idea for the film took screenwriter Lee Hall more than a year to think through, but once he committed himself fully to it he was able to write the first draft of the screenplay in only three weeks.
- #021
Filming began in August 1999 in Easington, a former mining town in Durham; for the shots of the working pits, the unit had to travel about 80 kilometres north to Lynemouth in Northumberland to find the last remaining working pit. Coincidentally, this was the pit on which writer Lee Hall based his story.
- #022
American audiences may not realize that "fanny," a soft, endearing, old-fashioned and gender-neutral term for the buttocks in the United States, is a rather disrespectful slang word for the female genitalia in the United Kingdom.
- #023
Burberry celebrated the film's 15th anniversary by using it as the inspiration for its 2015 Christmas campaign, which starred Dame Julie Walters, Sir Elton John, Michelle Dockery, Naomi Campbell and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
- #024
It was partly inspired by the film The Stars Look Down (1940), adapted from A. J. Cronin's novel, which tells of various injustices in a mining community in North East England. The film starred Sir Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams and Margaret Lockwood, and part of the action takes place in Tynecastle, a fictionalized Newcastle upon Tyne where Lee Hall, the screenwriter of this film, was born.
- #025
On 13 October 2010, the London musical "Billy Elliot" welcomed its three millionth patron at the Victoria Palace Theatre.
- #026
Billy's mother died on 2 December 1983.
- #027
With this film, Jamie Bell became the seventh person (and, as of 2024, the last) to win the BAFTA Award for Best Actor without being nominated for an Oscar. The first six are: * Kenneth More - Doctor in the House (1954) * François Périer - Gervaise (1956) * Dirk Bogarde - The Servant (1963) and Darling (1965) * Philippe Noiret - Cinema Paradiso (1988) * Hugh Grant - Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) * Robert Carlyle - The Full Monty (1997).
- #028
Jamie Bell and Dame Julie Walters appeared together in the film Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017).
- #029
Lee Hall completed his first draft in 3 weeks.
- #030
All of producer Jon Finn's maternal family worked in the pits in the region where filming took place.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work