Jamie Bell hates period dramas, but not enough to avoid two

"Like seriously, I am so not into period dramas. I think being English, I am like overloaded with period dramas. You can't escape them. They're on TV all the time. It's like thrust upon you in school. Like you just cannot get away from this idea. I understand that for people who aren't kind (used) to having it shoved down their throats all the time, it's kind of interesting, kind of exciting to see. 'Oh, like that's pretty, it looks nice, they kind of talk funny, it's kind of good.' But to me, it's so hackneyed. It's a hackneyed thing. It's boring," he said in a recent interview.

"So why am I doing a period drama," he said, with a long, thoughtful pause. "That's a good question."

Actually, the English actor is involved with two period dramas: In the Roman saga "The Eagle" and new film version of Charlotte Bronte's often-adapted 1847 gothic novel "Jane Eyre."

With "Jane Eyre," he took on the role of St. John Rivers, a missionary who takes in Jane (Mia Wasikowska) when she flees a haunting experience in the home of her employer, Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) after his manager encouraged him to watch the first film from director Cary Fukunaga, the celebrated 2009 immigration tale "Sin Nombre."

"That energy coming into something like that makes it fresh. And I think a gothic 'Jane Eyre' is much more interesting," he said. "We kind of understand this time period in a very aesthetic value. But we don't know what it feels like really, to really be there, to be an uneducated woman, who's kind of self-educated, doesn't come from any money in a time when all that matters — where you were educated and how much money you have. So what's it like to walk into these rooms and be with these people. So it's very much ‘Jane Eyre' from Jane Eyre's perspective," he said.

For "The Eagle," he had never read the source material, Rosemary Sutcliff's 1954 teen novel "The Eagle of the Ninth." But he loved the script:

"I just really loved the story. I'd never heard of the novel, I'd never read the novel, but I just really liked the journey and the world it was set in. I thought I hadn't really seen this specific time period in a long time kind of done well. And I really loved the character of Esca a lot."


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