The Malaysian Insider

LONDON , Jan 14 – Danny Boyle is the toast of the British movie scene. His latest masterpiece, Slumdog Millionaire, won four awards, has whipped critics into a frenzy and is heavily tipped for Oscar success next month.

But Boyle's army of fans and the salivating critics were nearly denied the “saviour of British cinema” when he came tantalisingly close to pursuing life at the altar rather than a career behind the camera.

When he was just 14, Boyle applied to transfer from his local grammar school in Wigan to a seminary – before a priest took him aside and warned him against it.

He recalls: “Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or saving the priesthood from me, I don't know. But quite soon after, I started doing drama.”

The church's loss was well and truly the rest of the world's gain. Globes aside, 52-year-old Boyle has been the golden boy of British cinema for a long time.

His first major success came in 1995 with Shallow Grave, a black comedy set in Edinburgh and starring Ewan McGregor about a murderous group of friends.

It was the first in a trilogy of collaborations between Boyle and Ewan, who went on to take the lead in 1996's Trainspotting – the film which secured Boyle 's reputation as one of the finest directors ever to come

from the UK.

In 1997 the pair came together again to make A Life Less Ordinary but they fell out after Boyle cast Leonardo Dicaprio as his lead in the 2000 movie The Beach.

The role had supposedly been promised to Ewan, who said at the time: “I was gutted. It's been a kind of love affair between Danny and me for years. But now it is as if he is seeing somebody else.”

Their break-up didn't halt Boyle 's rise. The acclaim for Slumdog Millionaire is just the latest accolade for the lad from Lancashire.

The film tells the story of a boy from the Mumbai slums on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" He is suddenly rich beyond his wildest dreams but finds his impoverished background means he is thrust into a completely alien world.

The fish-out-of water theme is not a million miles from Boyle 's own life, as the glitz and glamour in which he now lives is a far cry from his working-class roots.

He was born on Oct 20, 1956, in Radcliffe, near Bolton, to devoutly Catholic Irish immigrant parents. He grew up in a terraced house with his twin brother and two younger sisters, and talks fondly of his youth.

He recalls: “It was pretty patriarchal – you're the boy who's allowed to do anything, really, while the girls have to get sensible jobs.

“My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher's mum – she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.

“I've sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture. I've managed to get away from the town and when I see my mates who are still there it's weird.”

When Boyle was a teenager he and his pals used to make trips into nearby Bolton to try to sneak into the town's one porn cinema.

But once, after being rumbled by staff and stopped from getting into one

X-rated screening, they sneaked into Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange instead.

The controversial movie famously went on release for just a few weeks before Kubrick withdrew it.

Boyle says: “That had an amazing effect on me. All I remember is the first half. It is extraordinary to look back on it and realise the moral of it. I didn't remember the moral of it at all.

“It was the excitement I remember of seeing this violence, I suppose, and sex and style, really. That stuck with me.”

Encouraged by his parents, Boyle got good results at boys' Catholic grammar school, Thornleigh Salesian College.

He went on to study English and drama at the University of Wales, Bangor, where, he has said: “I had a great time, got into acting and discovered directing.”

After uni, Boyle applied for a job as a drama producer with BBC Belfast, and says: “Supposedly I was the only applicant from outside the region and they weren't going to appoint inside the region for their own reasons – political, religious, all that – so they appointed me.”

It was in Belfast that Boyle really cut his teeth. He wasn't just expected to produce drama but also to direct it and he was soon at the helm on the set of acclaimed drama series Mr Wroe's Virgins.

Soon after that he was appointed to direct Shallow Grave. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Today he remains close to his dad. They still go to watch their favourite footie team, Bury, play at the town's Gigg Lane ground.

When Bury aren't playing Boyle supports his other local team – Manchester United.

Speaking after receiving his award at the Golden Globes bash on Sunday he said: “The day was broken up into three parts – two good and one very bad.

“The really good – Manchester United beat Chelsea. The really bad – I put the tuxedo on. I was told it was a George Clooney-type look. But once I got it on it didn't look like that. So that was very bad.

“And then we picked up four Golden Globes. So it all ended merrily and happily.”

Boyle – an intensely private man – remains on good terms with his ex-girlfriend Gail Stevens, mum to his three kids.

He says: “We've always had a funny relationship. We've got three kids but we haven't really lived together for a while.

“We do live kind of on top of one another, though – we live in the same street, for the kids' sake. We get on really well, she's the casting director on my films.”

Down-to-earth Boyle is quick to dispel any myths about the glamour of life in the director's chair and says: “It's basically like a schoolteacher.”

“Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer.

“That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision – a good one or a bad one – and they follow it.”

So far, just like his hero in Slumdog Millionaire, it seems Boyle has been making all right decisions. – The Sun