Though he predicted that any major acting success he might enjoy would come later in life, Jim Broadbent can't possibly have expected that his fifties would bring triumph at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes and even an Oscar. Yet somehow this stalwart of British TV - perhaps previously best known as Del Boy Trotter's arch enemy, Ray "The Slag" Slater, in Only Fools And Horses - has reached the pinnacle of Hollywood success. Here's how he did it.

Jim Broadbent's desire to act runs in the family. His dad Roy was a maker of furniture, while his sculptress mum Dee looked after the kids, of which Jim was the youngest. Both parents were keen amateur dramatists and founder members of the Lindsey Rural Players. This was a troupe who sprang from the Holton Players, an acting group set up during WW2 by a community of conscientious objectors. When, in the late Sixties, the LRP bought a Methodist chapel in Wickenby (a small village between Lincoln and Market Rasen) to use as a theatre, Roy was instrumental in the conversion. Sadly, he died just after completion, so they named the new Broadbent Theatre after him.

Jim, now the LRP's honorary president, was

rn on the 24th of May, 1949, in Lincoln. He spent his early education at a Quaker boarding school in Reading, then, having been expelled for drinking just before his A-levels, successfully applied to art school. Here he spent a single year before his yearning to act professionally took strong hold (he'd made his stage debut at a very early age, 4, in his parents' production of A Doll's House) and he won a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, from where he graduated in 1972. With roles hard to come by, he enrolled at the Ugly Modelling Agency, hoping that his lack of leading man looks might help in the world of commercials. But it didn't work - "Perhaps I wasn't ugly enough", he later wondered. His first pro job was as Acting Assistant Stage Manager at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park - an uncommonly lowly title, but it was a start. From here he moved into regional theatre, building his confidence and honing his