Billy Elliot the Forum

As the movie version of Billy Elliot approaches its 14th birthday, the blog Showbiz Geek has done a very interesting photo comparison post on the members of the cast -- then and now.

http://showbizgeek.com/what-ever-happen ... ly-elliot/

The author of that piece is going to be very angry at himself for missing Matthew James Thomas.

Very cool, thanks for sharing this!

Sean

angelenroute wrote:The author of that piece is going to be very angry at himself for missing Matthew James Thomas.

Was he one of the students in the classroom scene ? Seems I remember from the "Billy Elliot" movie "deleted scenes" section that the runner-up to play the part of Billy was given a very small part in the classroom scene, but then his appearance got deleted. Was that Matthew ?

Matthew was Posh boy in the movie...the one who got punched!

Thanks porschesrule

Nice find-I enjoyed the article very much

Todd wrote:

angelenroute wrote:The author of that piece is going to be very angry at himself for missing Matthew James Thomas.

Was he one of the students in the classroom scene ? Seems I remember from the "Billy Elliot" movie "deleted scenes" section that the runner-up to play the part of Billy was given a very small part in the classroom scene, but then his appearance got deleted. Was that Matthew ?

As I recall, he auditioned for Billy, and apparently came pretty close to getting the part, but in the end, Jamie Bell got it instead. I don't remember where I read this, but I don't think I'm making it up.

I recall Matthew James Thomas' remarkable performance in Stephen Poliakoff's 'The Lost Prince', a very moving BBC film that won several Emmys and was shown on PBS:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/lostprince/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/los ... index.html

ERinVA wrote:As I recall, he auditioned for Billy, and apparently came pretty close to getting the part, but in the end, Jamie Bell got it instead. I don't remember where I read this, but I don't think I'm making it up.

The special edition DVD includes a BBC documentary about casting Billy for the film. There was a boy who was runner-up to play Billy. When they went with Jamie Bell, they offered the runner-up the part of the child in the classroom who asks about who put the coal in the ground. It's a great scene, with Debbie taking on the teacher over whether religion is the opiate of the masses. Unfortunately, the scene got cut, so the runner-up did not appear in the movie, except perhaps in the background as a non-speaking part.

Oh, right. That's the one I was thinking of.

The boy who almost became Billy was Lee Darville. An article about his audition and his scene in the film being cut can be seen here: http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/loca ... -1-1255608.

Stephen Daldry comments on the situation in the "deleted scenes" portion of the two disk version of the movie DVD, where Darville is seen asking a question. The young man is not seen anywhere else in the film.