Hannah who?

Just as he needed to get behind the camera again after a five-year absence from feature films, they recognised that his total ignorance of the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana phenomenon made him well placed to bring it to the big screen.

The Disney people entrusted him with the teenager who has an Emmy-nominated television series, sell-out concert tour, top-selling albums and large fan base to her credit. And here was Chelsom, a Brit who hadn’t the faintest idea who Miley Cyrus, or her on-screen alter ego, Hannah Montana, was.

The former actor, who counts the Yorkshire- made A Woman Of Substance among his work, first switched to the other side of the camera with his awardwinning short film, Treacle, and then his first feature, Hear My Song.

Funny Bones with Lee Evans, The Mighty with Sharon Stone, Serendipity with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale and Shall We Dance?, teaming Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, followed.

Chelsom owns up to not knowing who Miley/Hannah was when asked to direct.

“Without sounding too un-British and blowing my own trumpet, the producers, Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, and Disney say that I was their first choice and I believe them.

“I’ve been doing it long enough for them to know that I was a film-maker who could push a commercial button. I have no problem being universal. I said to them, ‘I’m not going to wear a Disney film-making hat to make this movie. It’s what you’ll end up with, but I’m going to be doing my own thing. Is that okay, is that what you want?’.

“And they said that’s why you’re here – and they were completely true to their word. You’ve no idea how nice and supportive they were.”

It was the happiest film he’s ever made.

“It was fun, I needed refreshing,” he says.

“What happens is you have passion projects and attach yourself to them. In one case, completely adapt a book into a screenplay which takes six, nine months.

The film’s about to go, you’re literally scouting on location and it falls through.

Plan B, then Plan C come into play.

“Years go. I direct commercials and write, I do other things. Directing commercials is like a good director’s gym.

You stop going rusty. As a working very successful film-maker, at least three years can go by being on a set.”

He went to Los Angeles in 1996 to do a movie starring Dustin Hoffman that didn’t happen. Then The Mighty came along and he never came home.

He was aware he had to please Miley’s fan base, but at the same time lead them off in a different direction to the Disney Channel TV series.

His star and her singer father, Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays her dad on screen, looked to him for help. Chelsom worked with her on her acting. “She was adorable. She was lovely to work with and I did quite a bit of teaching as well as directing.

Everyone thinks her father is a big guardian, ever present and meddling, but the absolute opposite is true. He’s so hands-off and doesn’t do anything about her apart from be there.”

As he was working on Hannah Montana until shortly before its release, he doesn’t know what his next project will be, but he has a pile of scripts to read.

I may even have given him an idea by mentioning a production of The Railway Children staged at the National Railway Museum in York, using a real steam train. It reminds him of his friendship with Lionel Jeffries, with whom he appeared on TV in Dennis Potter’s Cream In My Coffee, and who directed the film of The Railway Children.

Mention of E Nesbitt’s story has, he admits, “sparked something in me”. It sounds something in which the Disney family outfit might be interested.

I even give another suggestion – how about Miley Cyrus in the Jenny Agutter role of the young girl? He’d be happy to work with her again. “I get inspired by her. Her energy is ridiculous, but when you focus it and harness it, it’s remarkable,”

he adds.

■ Hannah Montana (U) is now showing in cinemas across the region.