Broadbent was a late starter

He was so quiet that those in his acting class hardly noticed him. Now Jim Broadbent has won an Oscar for best supporting actor in Iris, making him one of Hollywood's biggest British stars.

The accolade was not only a surprise for the 52-year-old, whose acceptance speech at yesterday's awards ceremony began: "Stone the crows!".

For his contemporaries in the class of '69 at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda), where Broadbent trained for three years, had him down as the one least likely to succeed.

It was a good year for home-grown talent - he was studying at the same time as Patricia Hodge, Lewis Collins, Lesley Joseph, David Suchet and Brian Cox.

Patricia Hodge, familiar in Loves and Lives of A She Devil, swiftly made a name on the West End stage, Collins shot to fame as Bodie in The Professionals and Brian Cox made it in the Eighties playing the original Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann's film, Manhunter.

The timid Broadbent was rather slower to come to the fore: it has taken him 33 years to shake off the label of an unsung character actor before really making his name with his two latest successes, Moulin Rouge and Iris.

Theatre owner John Plews, 54, who studied at the academy for two years while Broadbent was there and now runs the Upstairs at the Gatehouse, in Highgate, said: "I would never have had him down as an Oscar winner. Looking round the class he was not one you'd say was going to make the big time.

"Of course I remember Patricia, she was so confident and full of life, and even Lewis Collins who played a remarkable, rough-and-ready Romeo, almost preempting his role in the Professionals.

"With the best will in the world Jim was never going to be a star. He was just one of the quiet ones plodding along, so quiet in fact I can barely remember him in class.

"I am very surprised but pleased he got an Oscar and so late in his acting life."

Former student John Austin, 54, who studied technical management at the academy at the same time, said: "Jim arrived when I was in my last year and he was a fairly unremarkable student. I remember Patricia Hodge and David Suchet; you knew they were going to be big. Jim never really stood out."