Best of British

The 25-year-old is obviously a popular choice for the biggest win of the evening. Stunned by the wave of approval, for a second Britain's newest star appears incapable of rising from his table.

Then suddenly he's up, resplendent in black velvet dinner jacket, long shirt tail flapping, beaming hugely and bouncing towards the podium as his dinner companion and movie co-star Sophie Okonedo bursts into tears.

On stage Ejiofor can't stop smiling, his notorious reserve for once vanquished. The speech that follows downsizes his contribution to the picture to practically zero. Dirty Pretty Things director Stephen Frears is thanked, the script praised, the crowd reminded that the picture features an ensemble cast. Moral: sometimes nice guys do finish first.

'I was lucky,' Chiwetel Ejiofor is assuring me over lunch. The voice is slow and mellifluous, each word weighed. 'I did have the best director in Stephen Frears and a brilliant script. You can't expect a Dirty Pretty Things - a story with a multi-cultural message - to be slipped through your door every day.' And you shouldn't expect a performance as brilliant as Ejiofor's every day either.

As Okwe, a Nigerian doctor who's fled his homeland only to become an illegal immigrant, hotel porter and, finally, a reluctant criminal in the UK, he generated the sort of raves that would swell the head of even De Niro - 'Beautiful subtlety and dignity'... 'amazing depth and grace'... 'a powerfully silent performance.' News of his talent will come as no surprise to theatregoers, however. In recent years his Young Peers in Peer Gynt, his lead in Othello and his Romeo in Romeo And Juliet have all drawn extravagant praise.

His performance as a possibly schizophrenic patient in Blue/Orange garnered him the Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Newcomer in 2001 and put his name on the best Rolodexes on both sides of the Atlantic. And even those who haven't seen him burn a hole in the boards or heard that he's considered 'the most gifted actor of his generation' may be aware of the critical controversy that swirled around his current casting as the cocaineaddicted - and ineffably white - Bright Young Thing Nicky Lancaster in Noel Coward's The Vortex. 'Oh, hmm,' Ejiofor says. 'I find audiences have no trouble with that at all.'

Ejiofor is quite happy to talk about his work - 'It's all about the work' - but enquiries as to girlfriends and the number of American directors pursuing him since his recent triple whammy of Dirty Pretty Things on screen, Trust on TV and The Vortex at the Donmar are tersely, if politely, dealt with. 'Whatever you do, don't compliment him or ask personal questions,' a friend of the actor warned. 'He'll clam up.' Exactly.

Ejiofor guards his privacy zealously - even when I ask if Okwe is modelled on Ejiofor's father, a doctor who fled to Britain from Nigeria with his pharmacist wife in the Sixties to escape the Biafran war and who died in a car crash when Ejiofor was

11. Other sources confirm that Okwe is Ejiofor's tribute to a man who endured similar discrimination and who made sacrifices to send his four children to public school.

Namely Dulwich College. It's there Ejiofor --Shooey' to his mates - became obsessed with acting. 'Acting is not only something that I need to do but something I can't do without. On stage I am, fully alive... That's very thrilling.' He shrugs. 'Maybe that's a question of... a form of deflection.'

A blinding grin --The truth is, expressing emotion is easier for me if I have a medium.' A quiet child had discovered his escape, though the adult balks at defining from what. (His father's death? Racism?) A scholarship to Lamda followed and Ejiofor has worked consistently since, despite early warnings that his skin colour would doom him to a lifetime shortage of roles. At 19 he was in LA filming Amistad with Spielberg. The buzz has been building ever since.

Which may further explain the cloud of caution Ejiofor moves in. He's expected not merely to be our first black film star but Britain's first international black star. He's been anointed our Morgan Freeman, our Samuel L. Jackson, our Denzel Washington - though the star Ejiofor mentions as a role model is Dustin Hoffman, a sign perhaps that he'd prefer to be regarded as a potentially great actor as opposed to a potentially great black actor. Whatever, word is he's the right face at the right time.

'Really?' Ejiofor says. 'Am I that figure? Some of the projects I've done I'm very proud of. But I also know that I have done stuff and will do stuff that won't be greeted the same way.

For instance, Dirty Pretty Things has been well received but how do I... How does anyone sustain that level of accomplishment?' There's another reason for Dirty Pretty Things to be on his mind. The day before our interview the Tories called for all asylum seekers to be detained until any possible threat to national security is ascertained. This child of refugees is confused. 'There was a time when the pursuit of a better future for your family was respected. What seems to be happening now is that some people are entitled to that future and some are not and that those who aren't are judged on the basis of skin colour and what country they come from.'

Ejiofor gulps the last of his coffee. And suddenly seems fully alive off-stage, too.

The Vortex, ends Sat 15 Feb, Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, WC2 (020-7369 1732). Dirty Pretty Things is on general release.

The Vortex