Blistering barnacles, as Captain Haddock would have it. Tintin is to be portrayed by a British actor best known for his role as a ballet prodigy.

Jamie Bell, who appeared as the title character in Billy Elliot at the age of 14, has been cast as the lead in Steven Spielberg’s big-screen adaptation of the Tintin comic books.

He will provide the voice and movement for the bequiffed Belgian journalist in the animation film The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.

The signing of Bell is the last key casting decision in the project, which has taken almost 30 years to come to fruition. Spielberg, who first bought the option to create a Tintin film from its creator, Hergé, in 1982, has previously said that he plans to collaborate with Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings films, on up to three Tintin adventures.

Times Archive, 1983: Tintin in 'racist' trouble

Complaints have been made by librarians about Herge's use of highly offensive stereotypes

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Bell’s appointment to play arguably Belgium’s most famous export coincides with the announcement that Daniel Craig will play Red Rackham, one of the villains of the story. Craig, known for his portrayal of James Bond, starred opposite Bell recently in Defiance, an action drama set during the Second World War.

They join an almost exclusively British cast that includes Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson, the pair of bowler-hatted detectives with no instinct for solving crime. Andy Serkis, the British actor who appeared as Gollum in the Rings trilogy, will play Captain Haddock, the whisky-soaked sea dog who acts as Tintin’s travelling companion.

Other British cast members include Toby Jones, who recently portrayed Karl Rove in W, and Mackenzie Crook, who appeared in the television series The Office and the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Cast members will provide the movements for the animated characters by using performance capture technology, the technique that Jackson used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Their movements will be recorded by a computer and augmented with digital effects.

Secret of the Unicorn is the most popular of the 24 Tintin books written by Georges Remi, the Belgian cartoonist who used the pen name Hergé. It is the first of a two-part story from 1943 that concerns the clashes between Sir Francis Haddock, Captain Haddock’s ancestor, and Red Rackham, a seaman of low moral fibre.

The story, which was concluded in Red Rackham’s Treasure, also involved a gun-toting duo known as the Bird Brothers and a butler called Nestor. It is unclear whether Spielberg will incorporate Red Rackham’s Treasure into his film or if Peter Jackson will use the story when it is his turn to direct.

The film version will also feature new characters such as a rival reporter and an American inspector from Interpol. Tintin will also be accosted by his editor, a character whose irascible nature may be exacerbated by Tintin’s failure to file more than one story over the course of 24 adventures.

Mark Rodwell, of Moulinsart, which controls the rights to Tintin, said that the film-makers were allowed a certain degree of latitude as long as they did not alter the fundamentals of the story. “I don’t think a love interest would be possible,” he said. “But when you’re transforming something from the written page on to the big screen you have to have some new characters. What Steven and Peter are trying to do is be as true to Hergé’s original story as possible but they have to have some artistic licence.”

Mr Rodwell added that the story was Hergé’s favourite after Tintin in Tibet. Jamie Bell is the second actor to be offered the role of Tintin. Thomas Sangster, who appeared in Love Actually, was awarded the part last year but dropped out when the film was delayed because of funding problems.

Spielberg bought the option to create a Tintin film from Hergé in 1982, a year before the author’s death. It lapsed in the late 1980s but the director took out another in 2003. He exercised it four years later when he felt that animation technology had become sophisticated enough to do the books justice.

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