With a passport, a suitcase and a head full of dreams they set out to Hollywood. Where the cheques are big, the people beautiful, the sex frequent and frequently spectacular. Fate, however, is the one thing you can't plan.

A couple of auditions, a don't call us, we'll call you' later and our aspiring film star is uttering the only memorable line of their career, Would you like the latte tall or grande?' Although there was never any danger of Tom Wilkinson serving up frappucinos on Sunset Strip, his decision to head to the film-making capital of the known universe was certainly something of a gamble.

For Tom Wilkinson, middle-aged, little-known and with one of the least starry' names imaginable, it could have all gone so badly wrong. Luckily he had something that precious few in tinseltown possess: the ability to act.

"I decided a few years ago that I wanted to go into films and told my agent that I wouldn't do any more television or stage until I had tried my hand at it. As an actor, you always think the big boys play in the United States and so you want to see if you can try out and make it there. That's basically rather vain, but nevertheless that's how I felt," said Wilkinson, speaking at East Finchley's Phoenix Cinema at a special screening of his latest film, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, on Sunday.

His celluloid start could hardly have been better. The ball started rolling with crowd-pleasing Britcom The Full Monty, then Rush Hour raked in the dollars at the box office before the supremely Oscar-friendly Shakespeare In Love (seven gongs in 1999) cemented his stature. The man from Muswell Hill had made his mark. An Oscar-nominated performance followed in the family drama In The Bedroom, opposite Sissy Spacek.

Global stardom may have arrived late for the Leeds-born actor (he is now 55), but knowing how fickle the finger of fate can be, Wilkinson reacts with a degree of concern towards his younger co-stars, such as Scarlett Johansson, who he has starred with in Girl With A Pearl Earring and the forthcoming A Good Woman.

"It's scary. Here they are, aged 18, having achieved something huge. When I was 18, I was still in school they're rich as Croesus. It's tough enough having a life in showbusiness, and you do worry that the whole thing could fold up by the time they are 25.

"Then they have just the money, unless they have blown it. When I started it was different, you were in for the long haul."

He has a raft of upcoming films, including Stage Beauty, a period drama with Billy Crudup and Claire Danes, and blockbuster Batman Begins (scenes for which were recently shot at The National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill). Hollywood, it seems, has not grown tired of Tom Wilkinson but it can be frustrating.

His latest release, Eternal Sunshine, sees him paired with two more inexperienced actors Elijah Wood (star of Lord of the Rings) and Kirsten Dunst (star of Spiderman), as well as Jim Carrey (star of everything).

"There's one scene where I am talking Jim through the procedure as we walk along a corridor. It's 30 seconds or so and Jim doesn't say a word. We did it 15 times, and I didn't get it wrong once you know, I was good in that scene.

"It never made the cut.

"Nobody ever saw it. Sometimes film-making is like that," said Wilkinson.