As we walk towards a hotel suite for this interview, Stephen Daldry is taking a call from Elton John. Enthusiastic discussions of forthcoming weddings (Elton's) and box-office business (Billy Elliot's) ensue. It is the day after Billy Elliot won the Lon-don Evening Standard award for Best Musical, and its composer (Elton) and director (Daldry) are delighted, if not very sur- prised. "We haven't had a non-sold-out show since we opened," says Daldry.
Before Billy - both the sell-out musical and the hit movie that preceded it - Daldry, 44, was perhaps best known for running the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square and orchestrating its Lottery-funded rebuild. But this is not quite how he sees his career. "There has been one defining production for me in each decade. During my twenties, it was an adaptation of [Robert Tressell's] The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Then in my late twenties I directed An Inspector Calls, which dominated a lot of my thirties. Now, in my forties, it seems to be Billy Elliot."
They have been good choices. I don't know about the Tressell adaptation, but certainly An Inspector Calls (which was franchised across the globe) and Billy (which may well be) have ensured that Daldry needn't worry about his pension, whether he chooses to retire at 47 or 67. Daldry is quick to state, however, that London's latest smash is not as convenient a cash cow as other readily franchised musicals, such as Mamma Mia! or the grandmaster of the touring knees-up, Cats. Having a show starring a young boy, plus a supporting cast of children, is a different matter from popping a load of hoofers into leg warmers and whiskers and making sure their passports are valid.
"With the kids, Billy Elliot is just so complex. The scheduling of rehearsals is a full-time job in itself. Just getting three boys to the stage of doing the show in the first place was a real effort. It is such a huge part." Looking after the various Billys (the show is about to employ a fourth) has become a large part of Daldry's life. "There is a huge pastoral responsibility. You inevitably become a surrogate parent, and have to take responsibility for their education, and for them as emerging adults."
We have been here before. I remember Daldry saying much the same in relation to Jamie Bell, the fleet-footed tapper who starred in the film Billy Elliot, for which Daldry received an Oscar nomination for Best Director. "But that was one kid. And it was film, so you could cheat. Jamie was a great tapper, but he could never do a pirouette," he says. "He would say so himself. He was terrible at it. On stage, you need a totally different standard. And now that we have four Billys and four Michaels [Billy's best mate] you can't possibly give them that sort of individual attention, so you have to set up structures which make sure they are seeing their parents, and their education is fine." There is a Billy house in London, where all the principal children live, and a Billy school where they are educated. The show funds this. There is also a training programme in Leeds, where children are prepped for the lead roles long before the casting process even starts.
"Taking the show to New York, although hugely tempting, is a complex issue," says Daldry, who lives in the city with his wife and young daughter. Are Manhattan producers keen to bring it in? "Yes. They start talking about timing, and I have to say to them, 'I can't even begin to have a conversation about when you think your theatre might be free.' Everything is about when the kids might be ready. It's hugely expensive. And hugely time- consuming. Because you are making decisions about kiddies' lives, all the way down the line. And we still don't know about the long-term effects on the children in the show. So we are constantly looking at it."
Daldry, although tall, slim and blessed with what one might call Peter Pan looks (retrousse nose, twinkling eyes, a full head of hair), looks exhausted. The legendary charm is there, but he rubs his eyes a lot. Instead of acting as surro- gate father to a dozen pre-teens, wouldn't it have been easier for him to have jetted off to Hollywood to shoot a follow-up to The Hours, which earned Nicole Kidman (as Virginia Woolf) her first Best Actress Oscar?
"I am a theatre director," he replies, "who nips in and does the odd movie. I am not a movie director. Sure, I am always pursuing film projects, but I can't do anything until I decide what the future life of Billy is." In the franchising world, they call it the "roll-out". "The question is, do I spend the next two years setting up the roll-out of Billy in New York, Toronto, Tokyo, Shanghai, Germany and Australia?" For such is the well-rehearsed destiny of a hit musical. Of course, this would make Daldry millions. Isn't he tempted? "I have never been motivated by money in my life," he says, very much the working director in sneakers, jeans and a plaid bomber jacket. "You can't make choices based on what the financial return might be."
But there are people who spend all day doing that in the City, I say. There are people who spend their entire lives making choices based on a predicted financial return. It's not illegal. "I think that any time one tries to do something in bad faith, by which I mean using money as a primary motivator, you come a cropper. In artistic enterprises. That's when things go wrong, when shows don't work. If I'm broke, I'll go and do an advert." And he does, for Hilton Hotels, De Beers and other high-rolling companies, which presumably enjoy not only the level of production, but also the cachet of having Stephen Daldry, the famous English creative, directing their ad. "You get paid a fortune. And because it's a slightly cynical exercise which takes only two days, it's easier to do."
Surely, flogging An Inspector Calls around the globe nearly 15 years after it was first produced at the National Theatre (the show is about to open in Sydney) bears some reference to the relationship between money and old rope? "Well, yes, Inspector was a financial win. But a surprise one. And surprise financial wins are much better, because if they were planned, that would be acting in bad faith. In the beginning, I didn't even want to do it. At the time, I was unemployed, living in a bedsit in Camberwell, washing up at a Greek taverna. And a nice man called Derek Nicholls, who ran the York Theatre Royal, tried to help me out by asking me to come up and direct An Inspector Calls. I didn't like the play, at that time. So I went up and gave him the most outrageous idea I could think of, so that he would ask me to do something else. I'd read that some soldiers had performed the play before they were demobbed in the desert, so I asked him if I could do it with tanks and squaddies, in the desert. And he went, 'All right.' As it happens, I didn't do that exact idea; but I worked the play out, and when Richard Eyre [then artistic director of the National Theatre] asked what I could do for him at the National, I suggested An Inspector Calls because I wanted to work out the ideas some more."
When Eyre left the National, Daldry's name was in the frame as the obvious replacement, but he didn't go for it. "Nick Hytner [Eyre's successor] is doing a fantastic job," he says quickly. "I don't think I would have ever done it as well as him. But I think at some point I will go and run a theatre again. I would love to run a regional theatre." In America? "No. I am not that interested in American culture, or indeed the American culture of theatregoing - running a subscription house, which is the only way they do their theatres." It's not enough fun. As Daldry says, in decidedly incorrect English, "I am big into fun. Rebuilding the Royal Court, for example, was such good fun. Serious fun. So much more fun than doing a show or a movie."
His current success probably means he can search for "serious fun" for the rest of his life. And although Daldry's amused, slightly sceptical face at the Oscars two years running was a masterclass in the "Americans are weird!" school of British expression, the Academy Awards bandwagon is not something that he will ever be doing again - it's just not fun. "They call them movie 'campaigns'. Or rather, Harvey Weinstein [the movie mogul whose Miramax company owns US distribution rights to The Hours] does." After he had completed The Hours, Daldry and the cast were dragged around all the American gong shows in order to encourage Academy members to vote for the film when Oscar came a-calling in the spring. It's a requisite for many films, but particularly for eclectic, "art-house" pictures backed by Weinstein, which often don't get blanket exposure in the United States.
"It starts in November. And you have to slog across America, going to about 30 different award shows. And the best thing about it was knowing I would never, ever do it again. The fun factor is minimal. You are with people you don't want to be with, in situations you don't want to be in, and I don't think it does you any good at all." Does it not help get a little gold statue? Daldry looks stern. "The whole campaign is a manufactured issue by unemployed PR companies and I think it does no good whatsoever. I love Harvey dearly. But the idea of an Oscar 'campaign', which is what Harvey invented, is overblown, and whether it gets more votes is entirely a debatable issue."
Overhyped, and no fun. This earns double Daldry scorn. "What I am arguing against is the way they persuade Academy voters to vote for your movie. Does it really convert old Mrs Bloggs, who once had an Oscar nomination 20 years ago, to vote for you? I think, in the end, not. The whole campaign is corrupted, corruptible and invidious. People are bribed through ridiculous points of access. And goody bags. It's rubbish and it's fucking boring. I wouldn't do it again. In fact, I will write into my next contract that I won't do it again. It's not about supporting your movie. It's about supporting PR agencies." But surely, to have directed Kidman to the level where the trophy was hers will have raised his stock as a film director? Daldry won't have it. "Awards are not a primary motivator," he says.
Perhaps his ethical stance was formed directing The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at an impressionable age. Although the rips in Daldry's jeans are probably produced by a fashion designer rather than hard labour, he is constantly distancing himself from what one might see as the capitalist imperative of the movie or, for that matter, the theatre business. He will always vaunt the artistic validity of a project over its financial gain. Many artists do this, but the choices that Daldry has made in his admittedly highly successful career are evidence that he means it.
Why else would he spend so long apprenticed to the uneven charms of subsidised theatre, or months touring tricky new plays around East Anglia? Why get involved in his latest venture, a modern adaptation of the New Testament (with Aids orphans playing all the roles) in Khayelitsha, the vast township on the outskirts of Cape Town?
"If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?"
Why, indeed, when a theatrical confection starring a boy in a tutu is getting audiences to stand and cheer and laugh and cry at the theatre eight times a week, every week?
