No doubt about it, Jamie Bell still loves to boogie.

It is 17 years since he and Julie Walters were scooping up gongs for their magical performances in Billy Elliot, the movie about a bullied, ballet-mad Geordie lad taking secret lessons from his no-nonsense dance teacher.

Jamie was 13, Julie wasn’t a Dame and their paths have never crossed since. Until now.

The two have reunited on-screen as mother and son in the poignant, tender and waggish Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool based on an extraordinary memoir about the Hollywood star Gloria Grahame. 

The likeable and very lively actor, looking uber-cool in warm, muted autumn tones, picks up on old themes as he runs through his idea for an early scene with “mum”.

He says, “We’re in the kitchen, she’s stressed out, worried about flying to Manila.

"I go to hug her and I wanted to do this thing where I kind of dance the polka with her.

"But the director said, ‘We can’t do that. It’s the first scene in the movie. It’s too much.’”

And you can see where director Paul McGuigan was coming from. 

The image of a grown-up Billy and his ballet teacher spinning round the kitchen table probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

Jamie, 31, was delighted to be working with his former mentor again, though.

“In a way, it was like picking up where we left off.

"Julie is Julie. She has the greatest, loving personality. Literally, the only difference in our dynamic is that now I’m a bit taller than her. When I was a kid I wasn’t paying any attention because I didn’t know what I was doing and it was my first movie.

“But this time I was aware that Julie Walters is a great actress. She is a total legend. Whenever she came on the set we were all so excited to have her there. Stephen Graham, who plays my brother, is a hard nut and got very embarrassed. He was shaking when he met her.”

However, Stephen’s nerves on meeting Julie Walters were nothing compared to Jamie’s during his first encounter with Annette Bening, who plays the fading Hollywood star. J

amie smiles good-naturedly as he takes a sip of chilled designer water in his Soho hotel suite. 

“She’s formidable. One half of Hollywood royalty, married to Warren Beatty,” he says.

“It’s scary to have to work with someone who doesn’t appear to exert themselves to achieve greatness. There’s a comfort, a confidence and an understanding of what she’s doing.”

Jamie did manage to return to his Billy Elliot roots when he squeezed in some outstanding dance moves with his leading lady.

“Annette is just seasoned. To challenge yourself and hold your own against this kind of mighty force was incredibly daunting and stressful. My heart was pumping,” he confesses.

Producer Barbara Broccoli, who is also behind the James Bond franchise, nursed the memoir and film project for more than 20 years, with nobody but Annette in her sights to portray the eccentric and four-times married 50s film siren who died from cancer aged 57 in 1981.

Over the years, Gloria’s star had become tarnished as she found herself at the centre of any number of salacious scenarios in her personal life.

But she was also at the heart of many a major film, including The Big Heat, It’s A Wonderful Life, In A Lonely Place and Oklahoma! and won a best supporting actress Oscar for The Bad And The Beautiful.

The celebrated four-times Oscar-nominated Annette Bening is now 59 and Barbara felt the time was right to explore on-screen Gloria’s last romance – with the Liverpudlian jobbing actor Peter Turner, 29 years her junior, who would go on to write his memoir.

Jamie was cast as Peter who began a romance with the ageing actress when they stayed in the same London boarding house in the late 70s, an affair that would last for more than two tempestuous years. 

“The sense of the story is fantastical,” says Jamie.

“These two contrasting people – one is from Hollywood, the other from Liverpool – even the sound of them in the same room is extreme. Early on Annette and I were doing a script reading. I looked up and Barbara was crying.

"And then she told me that she was friends with Peter and had hung out with them both. Suddenly the actual truth of everything clicked into place.

“Annette didn’t know Gloria but I think has affiliations with people who did and are referenced in the film. It’s a circle she is very close to, so embodying this person was both easy and tricky because it’s a world she inhabits today.

"She wanted to take care of Gloria’s legacy and the people around her.”

Hollywood has long been home for the Billingham-born actor, although happily he retains traces of his Tyneside accent and there’s barely a trace of transatlantic crossover.

Jamie and his Fantastic Four co-star, Kate Mara, married this summer in California and he has a four-year-old son with his first wife, Westworld’s Evan Rachel Wood.

Jamie played the title role in Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures Of Tintin and worked for Peter Jackson in King Kong and Clint Eastwood on Flags Of Our Fathers.

Self-assured and confident, part class clown, part considerate and thoughtful, Jamie talked “to the point of exhaustion” with Peter Turner, whose liaison with the highly strung and complex Gloria was no gentle affair.

“It’s clear they had a feisty relationship,” he says.

“Their fights were significant. They also had a very physical connection. Their sex life was extremely active.

"There wasn’t one area of Gloria Grahame’s life that didn’t turn into a drama. But it was the stuff surrounding her cancer, her rejection of diagnosis, unwillingness to deal with it on any level and the reasons why – ‘I have to look a certain way and I don’t. I don’t work’ – that I found painful to get to grips with. She was living on apricot kernels and black-grape juice, hoping that it would put the cancer into remission. That stuff is so overwhelming.”

Also overwhelming was the fact Jamie had to spend days in bed with the wife of a legendary Hollywood Lothario.

“I did find that ‘she’s married to Warren Beatty so what makes me so special?’ going through my brain a lot of the time,” admits Jamie about some of his scenes with Annette.

“This is one of the most outright romantic things I’ve ever done on-screen. Annette’s done this a million times. I mean that in the best possible way – not that she gets her kit off all the time. But she’s done these things with many different types of actors.

“But there’s still an awkwardness about it and it’s a little frightening. I found myself apologising all the time, ‘Sorry I’m not a tall, beautiful leading man.’ Annette’s hilarious. She has a laugh that’s infectious and I loved more than anything giggling with her. We were snorting with laughter between takes.”

But what makes Jamie smile most is mention of his son. This unconventionally handsome man beams,“I can talk about him for hours but I never say his name. Why? I dunno, I dunno. I’m very protective. He’s easily what I’m most proud of because he blows my mind every day.

“He is stunning, hilarious, so eccentric and smart, such a mimic. He loves pretending to be things. Costumes are really important to him and right now he loves dressing up as a pirate or a superhero.

"He has this innate reaction to make-believe and imagination, has an amazing memory, is so clever and always aware.”

Jamie is now filming Skin, a fact-based movie about a white supremacist, but home is clearly where his heart is. As a father, he is besotted.

Jamie and Evan, his former on-off partner of more than seven years, have a relaxed co-parenting situation and Kate adores her stepson.

Although he and Kate, 34, started dating after they finished shooting Fantastic Four, they had known each other for years and both screen tested for movie Stop-Loss in 2008.

“It was a revolving door of men also testing for a scene where we had to kiss Kate. I thought it went well but neither of us got the part. Years later she said mine was the kiss she’d enjoyed most.” 

Jamie’s new movie, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, is in cinemas now.