Release CalendarTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV News
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily Entertainment GuideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsCannes Film FestivalStar WarsAsian Pacific American Heritage MonthSummer Watch GuideSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign In
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

Billy Elliot

  • 2000
  • R
  • 1h 50m
IMDb RATING
7.7/10
148K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
3,659
393
Jamie Bell in Billy Elliot (2000)
Watch Trailer [OV]
Play trailer0:59
2 Videos
99+ Photos
Coming-of-AgePeriod DramaShowbiz DramaDramaMusic

A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

  • Director
    • Stephen Daldry
  • Writer
    • Lee Hall
  • Stars
    • Jamie Bell
    • Julie Walters
    • Jean Heywood
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.7/10
    148K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    3,659
    393
    • Director
      • Stephen Daldry
    • Writer
      • Lee Hall
    • Stars
      • Jamie Bell
      • Julie Walters
      • Jean Heywood
    • 507User reviews
    • 91Critic reviews
    • 74Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 3 Oscars
      • 55 wins & 71 nominations total

    Videos2

    Trailer [OV]
    Trailer 0:59
    Trailer [OV]
    Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon Share Their Films of Hope for Difficult Times
    Clip 8:09
    Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon Share Their Films of Hope for Difficult Times
    Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon Share Their Films of Hope for Difficult Times
    Clip 8:09
    Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon Share Their Films of Hope for Difficult Times

    Photos141

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 135
    View Poster

    Top cast43

    Edit
    Jamie Bell
    Jamie Bell
    • Billy
    Julie Walters
    Julie Walters
    • Mrs. Wilkinson
    Jean Heywood
    Jean Heywood
    • Grandma
    Jamie Draven
    Jamie Draven
    • Tony
    Gary Lewis
    Gary Lewis
    • Dad
    Stuart Wells
    Stuart Wells
    • Michael
    Mike Elliot
    • George Watson
    Billy Fane
    • Mr Braithwaite
    Nicola Blackwell
    • Debbie
    Carol McGuigan
    • Librarian
    Joe Renton
    • Gary Poulson
    Colin MacLachlan
    • Mr. Wilkinson
    • (as Colin Maclachlan)
    Janine Birkett
    • Billy's Mum
    Trevor Fox
    • PC Jeff Peverly
    Charlie Hardwick
    • Sheila Briggs
    Denny Ferguson
    • Miner
    Dennis Lingard
    • NCB Official
    Matthew James Thomas
    Matthew James Thomas
    • Simon
    • (as Matthew Thomas)
    • Director
      • Stephen Daldry
    • Writer
      • Lee Hall
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews507

    7.7148K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    Orson5

    A Triumph of Highly Charged Storytelling

    Billy Elliot is by far the most honestly told depiction of middle boyhood I've seen in years, if ever. I was in joyful tatters at the end of this story of a boy struggling to stay true to his calling in an anguished northern English mining town circa 1980. Every working class character in this film is written and uncompromisingly played with great love and understanding of both family and class hardship. Personally I view this film as the finest piece of British "intimiste" cinema I've seen since Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies". Yet it has epic elements as well. Billy's personal story unfolds while his home town is occupied by uniformed British strike control forces.

    This is a tale of inter-masculine struggle in a family and mining town almost devoid of (and yearning for) a balancing feminine presence. Billy's gift is slowly awakened in this stressed and violent male crucible. His relationships with his brother, his father, his genderally confused classmate, and his teacher all grow increasingly charged as the movie develops. For honesty and presence, Jamie Bell as Billy far surpasses Haley Joel Osment's debut in The Sixth Sense. And if that's not enough, Julie Walters, Gary Lewis and Jamie Draven as Billy's teacher, dad and brother are all heartbreakingly portrayed. All are perfectly cast and at the very top of their form.

    After all these characters have passed through the warzone of the first and second acts, director Steven Daldry delivers perhaps the most perfectly executed third act I have seen in a family centered drama from England or elsewhere. There are countless insightful decisions Daldry makes in the course of this film that other directors will study for years to come. But they're all brought to touching and masterful closure in the third act segments.

    Kudos to scenarist Lee Hall for an excellent script. It should also be noted that many of DP Brian Tufano's beautifully composed shots match those of the great Chinese and Italian cinematographers. The film is brash in its musical style and forthright in its language. It is a film of specifics and the locale is not dressed up. And unlike many other local color films from England since 1985, this film has a strong, eminently compassionate narrative spine. Many audience members in the show I attended were immobilized and overcome in their seats during credits.

    Despite frequent profanity, boys 11 and up should be allowed to see Billy Elliot, if only to keep them from abandoning hope. If it helps even one oppressed and confused boy keep an ear to the faint voice within that might just be his true calling, this film will have been worth every dollar spent in its making. A truly uplifting film.
    9TheLittleSongbird

    Beautiful, honest, touching, poignant- a truly remarkable film

    This movie is such a good film for a number of reasons. As a study of daring to be different in the fact of intractable tradition, Billy Elliot is beautiful, touching, poignant and very honest. It does start off slowly, but the film does have a lot of heart. Firstly, I liked the story, a young boy who wishes to ballet dance against the the backdrop of the 1984 miner's strike, it was a nice one and is likely to evoke some emotion. Stage director Stephen Daldry makes his feature debut here, and succeeds pretty much brilliantly. Another strong asset was the writing, while funny in places, it is also quite touching. Then the music, I loved hearing the music Tchaikovsky's timeless ballet "Swan Lake", such a melancholy yet enchanting and haunting score. But really the best asset of the film is the acting. Jamie Bell gives a really believable performance in the lead role, while Gary Lewis is marvellous as his dad. The acting honours though go to the brilliant Julie Walters as Billy's chain smoking dance instructor, that role especially proves what a fine actress Walters is. In conclusion, I loved this film. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox
    10Juni78ukr

    Simply excellent

    I have been looking for Billy Elliot for more than two years. I heard that it should be very good or even excellent film and another reason for watching it was that I have seen several Working Title films before (About a Boy, Notting Hill, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and I found all of them much more sincere and emotional than average Hollywood products. Also these British films have something to offer that you rarely can find in Hollywood movies: a charming heartwarming mixture of sweet and funny comedy and inspiring and touching drama. Last month, finally, I found the tape. From very first moments of the movie my eyes were riveted to the screen and when the movie ended feelings and emotions overflowed me. Billy Elliot in my opinion Billy Elliot is a brilliant movie, easily one of the best movies of the year and most likely of the current decade.

    Director of the movie Stephen Daldry brought to us an exceptional, truly inspiring and moving, emotional and poignant movie. The entire story and all the characters are completely believable and the atmosphere of small provincial town somewhere in North-Eastern England skillfully captured and transmitted to us. Sometimes the movie is sad, sometimes it's funny but Stephen Daldry's work never leave you indifferent. The story occurs in a small coal-mining town in 1984 and there are signs of a severe depression all over the town. You can see all around a shadow of distress and even poverty. Some simple but incredibly powerful scenes bring to us sad feeling of hopelessness and even despair. There is a big coalminers strike in the town but it's easy to see that it's also the hopeless strike. But all this is only a masterfully recreated background for main story of the title character, a twelve years old boy. He recently lost his mother and both his father and elder brother are striking coalminers. Billy is forced by his father to attend boxing classes and one day accidentally he see the girl ballet classes that occur in same room and he find ballet much more interesting than hated stupid boxing. So he attends those ballet classes instead the boxing and there is nothing surprising that after a few weeks his father suddenly finds out that Billy didn't attend boxing and worst of all he is attending the ballet classes. The main conflict occurs.

    Billy must fight for his choice, fight against his own family. There are two stereotypes against him. First one is that ballet for girls, not for boys (lads do football... or boxing... or wrestling). And second sounds even worse: all male ballet dancers are gays. Billy is not but no one from his family except aged grandma want even heard about ballet. There are only two people in the whole town, who support him – middle-aged ballet teacher Mrs. Wilkinson and his friend Michael, who is the same age as Billy and who found that he is possibly a gay. This gay subplot easily became for conservative audience a very controversial question. But the fact is that such stereotypes are not invented by the director of the movie and if you would try to learn more about this terrific picture you will found that Jamie Bell, who took dance lessons from age six, suffered from similar sneers and taunts. Billy's problem is that he must fight not only against bad obstacles and misunderstanding but also against strong social stereotypes. Several brilliant come scenes and bright humor greatly emphasize the struggles of the main hero.

    Jamie Bell playing Billy has on of the best performances ever among young actors. His performance (and particularly dance sequences) is so genuine, bright and sincere that all the time we can easily feel an expression of a young boy, not a director, choreographer or writer. BAFTA award for best actor of the year is well-deserved and it is pity that conservatism of the Academy too often becomes an insuperable obstacle for many great movies. Julie Walters (an Academy nomination for best supporting actress) as Billy's ballet teacher also did a great job as a talented woman as a talented women who forced to teach in small provincial town for pitiful salary. The chemistry between teacher and student is another great line in Billy Elliot. Two other important supporting characters – Billy's father and elder brother Tony are also excellent and their evolution is perfectly showed by Stephen Daldry's direction. The beautiful soundtrack is a perfect combination of a classic (including a nice reference to great Swan Lake) and modern music.

    The original "R" rating shouldn't mislead you. Except for strong language it should be easily a PG-13. But this is a very rare case where some strong language and profanity are necessary for authenticity and characters understanding. The movie is suitable for teens and it definitely is able to give some good lessons for them.

    10 out of 10 looks well deserved. Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad English
    off.rails

    a pleasure from start to finish

    With a seemingly run-of-the-mill storyline - that of an 11-year-old schoolboy wanting to be a ballet dancer - it is quite a feat to have made a movie as warm and entertaining as this.

    Quite simply, this is the best British movie in years. All the characters are intriguing, and the acting is flawless, most notably from 14-year-old Jamie Bell whose acting is utterly convincing, filled with humour and insight beyond his years. He is also a fantastic dancer, and some of the dance sequences are reminiscent of the dance-filled musicals of the old black and white movies.

    The backdrop of the historic miners' strike of the mid-1980s, it brings the story down to the earth and adds the necessary tension to make this film truly believable and a worthy story to tell.

    I find it hard to see how anyone would not like this film. 9 and a half out of 10.
    9Geofbob

    Sheer magic

    Billy Elliott is a moving, uplifting, and often exuberant, drama about motherless young Billy (Jamie Bell) fulfilling his dream of becoming a ballet dancer, in the process overcoming the objections and prejudices of his father and brother (Gary Lewis and Jamie Draven).

    It is also a piece of magic realism, with political overtones. By setting their near fairy tale in the context of a close-knit mining community, and more specifically against the backdrop of the 1984/5 miners' strike - a defining moment of modern British economic and social history - writer Lee Hall and director Stephen Daldry are able to refer to gender and class issues, without turning their work into a political tract, and without losing focus on the central human drama.

    The film is realised near flawlessly. Bell achieves a convincing blend of adolescent bewilderment and defiance; if his dancing is not quite as good as we might expect, the storyline explains this away by saying that at this early stage his attitude and drive are more important than his technique. The dancing set pieces, clearly inspired more by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly than by Nijinksky, are performed with gusto, mainly to pop songs by T-Rex.

    Lewis and Draven put gritty realism and passion into their roles of a father and son committed to their community and to the miners' cause. They make us feel their despair as they realise that this cause is lost; but also their endurance as they come to terms both with Billie's aspirations and their own uncertain futures - within a few years most UK coalmines would be closed. (The colliery in Easington, the real-life location of the film, closed in 1994.). The scenes of violence between strikers and police are presented uncompromisingly and authentically, but with the occasional touch of humour.

    Julie Walters provides an outstanding performance as Mrs Wilkinson, the dancing teacher who recognises and fosters Billie's talent; and helps him resist his own and his family's inhibitions. She is perfect as the chain-smoking, straight-talking mentor, who has her own personal disappointments and hurts, which she hopes Billie's success will help heal. To we outsiders watching the movie, Mrs Wilkinson appears as an integral part of the local community; but it is made clear that in the mid-80s, as far as Billie's family and friends are concerned, she is a middle class outsider, almost as alien as another species.

    One issue which the film tackles head-on is traditional heterosexual male abhorrence of homosexuality. This attitude clearly underlies the shock of Billie's father and brother when they discover his interest in ballet. They would be even more horrified if they realised that his best friend was discovering gay tendencies in himself. It is typical of the sensitive direction that without labouring the point the film indicates by its close that attitudes towards gays changed radically during the 1980s and 90s along with the industrial landscape.

    More like this

    The Full Monty
    7.2
    The Full Monty
    The Chorus
    7.8
    The Chorus
    Bend It Like Beckham
    6.7
    Bend It Like Beckham
    About a Boy
    7.1
    About a Boy
    The Hours
    7.5
    The Hours
    Billy Elliot
    8.3
    Billy Elliot
    Moulin Rouge!
    7.6
    Moulin Rouge!
    The Cider House Rules
    7.4
    The Cider House Rules
    Notting Hill
    7.2
    Notting Hill
    Shakespeare in Love
    7.1
    Shakespeare in Love
    Chocolat
    7.2
    Chocolat
    Four Weddings and a Funeral
    7.1
    Four Weddings and a Funeral

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Jamie Bell was going through puberty at the time of filming. Some of his dialogue had to be post-synched as his voice had broken. And the opening scene in which he jumps up and down on a bed to T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" was shot over a lengthy period of time. For the latter takes, Bell had acquired hair on his legs and had to have them shaved.
    • Goofs
      Billy's brother listens to music in his room (at around 42 mins) while wearing headphones but in cuts to the father and grandmother in other rooms in the house they hear the music as well. Some stereos allow the use of headphones and speakers together.
    • Quotes

      Tutor 1: What does it feel like when you're dancing?

      Billy: Don't know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going... then I like, forget everything. And... sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I've got this fire in my body. I'm just there. Flyin' like a bird. Like electricity. Yeah, like electricity.

    • Alternate versions
      An edited version was released in the USA rated PG-13 that tones down the language.
    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Remember the Titans/The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen/Under Suspicion (2000)
    • Soundtracks
      Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails
      Performed by Fred Astaire

      Courtesy of Turner Entertainment Co.

      Composed by Irving Berlin

      Irving Berlin Music Corp.

      By kind permission of Warner/Chapplel Music Limited

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ20

    • How long is Billy Elliot?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • November 10, 2000 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • France
    • Official sites
      • Filmymen
      • Universal
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Dancer
    • Filming locations
      • Easington, Peterlee, County Durham, England, UK(Rialto Cinema)
    • Production companies
      • StudioCanal
      • Working Title Films
      • BBC Film
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $5,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $21,995,263
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $215,681
      • Oct 15, 2000
    • Gross worldwide
      • $110,166,733
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 50 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Jamie Bell in Billy Elliot (2000)
    Top Gap
    By what name was Billy Elliot (2000) officially released in India in Hindi?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb app
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb app
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb app
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.