Nicholas Hellen, Media Editor

Hollywood's haves and have-nots: Winslet is said to lack big star quality but Grant has it

THE Americans have it, but the British don't. One of Hollywood's top producers has pinpointed why our young actors have so little star quality: they are too snobby.

Mike Medavoy, maker of some of the biggest hit films in recent history, including and with close links to stars such as Kevin Costner, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange, says young British actors are too obsessed with their craft to realise what excites the cinema-goer.

Big-name stars, he claims, always end up playing themselves, while actors are trained to conceal their personality to make the part more convincing.

He said: "Being an actor and being a star are at cross purposes: they are entirely different things."

He suggested that artistic integrity will always come at the expense of commercial success for Britain. "Perhaps it's because there's a pride in the art of acting and perhaps, rightly, a snobbery about not wanting to be a movie star.

"I also detect a resentment here in Britain of people who go on to make it in Hollywood. There is an unhappiness about success, unless someone has spent a long time paying their dues. The only other place where I have noticed something similar is in Canada."

While some older British actors, including Sir Sean Connery, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Michael Caine have held on to their charisma, younger names such as Kenneth Branagh and Daniel Day-Lewis have thrown away their chance to make the big time.

Medavoy, who has been associated with more than 300 films, including hits such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Raging Bull, Dances with Wolves, Platoon, and The Silence of the Lambs, said: "Britain produces more than its fair share of great acting talent, but misses out on producing movie stars."

Not even roles in some of the highest-grossing movies of all time have been enough to guarantee young British actors a place on the A-list.

Kate Winslet returned to low-budget movies such as Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke after co-starring with Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, and Ewan McGregor is still waiting for a breakthrough as a leading man after appearing in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace.

Other performers who he believes could have used their talent to achieve much greater popularity include Gary Oldman, Rupert Everett and Kenneth Branagh.

Medavoy believes that while a British actor would be proud of going unrecognised in a film, true stars resent demands to immerse themselves in a role.

"I once asked Marlon Brando why he always looked so miserable at the beginning of a day's filming, and he said, "Can you imagine what it is like going to work each day and having to pretend you are someone else?' "

It is a dilemma unlikely to embroil Arnold Schwarzenegger as he seeks to achieve another global hit with The Sixth Day, Medavoy's latest movie, released this weekend. Medavoy's conclusions about the inadequacies of local acting talent will dismay the British film industry as it defies a string of recent low-budget flops to embark on a range of big-budget movies costing hundreds of millions of pounds.

So who may yet be a force to be reckoned with? Medavoy singles out Jude Law, who upstaged Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who recently married Michael Douglas, and the foppish actor Hugh Grant.

His verdict is endorsed by Alexander Walker, the film critic and biographer of an array of British stars, including Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. "Stars need to lead extravagant lives off the screen, with spectacular marriage bust-ups, drug habits and a very public rehabilitation."

"In this sense, it helped Hugh Grant enormously to be caught with Divine Brown. In the eyes of cinema-goers, it was the sort of behaviour they expect. "

The Grinch is going on strike, writes John Harlow in Los Angeles. Jim Carrey, who stands to earn a record £50m for his role as the fantastical creature who wants to spoil Christmas, is refusing to make any more films until Hollywood studios pay actors such as him a lot more money.

He is supporting members of the powerful Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) who want the eight major studios to agree to a "master deal" that will, for the first time, give them a bigger share of profits from satellite television and DVD sales.