Jude the obscure? Not a chance

Hollywood insiders and Vanity Fair magazine are in accord: Jude Law is a full-blown superstar. Fellow Brit-pack actor Ewan McGregor may have eclipsed him in the firmament of international celebrity until now but Law's appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair's next issue suggests his star is in steep ascent.

Law, who is married to actress Sadie Frost, has begun work on the Stanley Kubrick-inspired, Steven Spielberg-directed project AI - the film that should do for him what The Phantom Menace did for McGregor.

The film, based on a screenplay Kubrick was developing before his death, stars Law in the role of Gigolo Joe opposite another, even younger actor: Haley Joel Osment, the boy who saw dead people in The Sixth Sense. It is set in a future where the ice-caps have melted and humans rely on the artificial intelligence (the AI of the title) of robots to manage what remains of the earth.

The young man from south London seems slightly dazed at the prospect. "Just to be in the world of Kubrick and Spielberg combined," he tells the magazine.

"I mean, I would have been happy with either but to have them both ..."

Law has already received an Oscar nomination for his role as Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley, but he can still go unrecognised - in fact, he says, he is often told he looks like someone famous.

He says: "It's either River Phoenix or a young Malcolm McDowell, or a young Tony Curtis. One day they'll say they all look like Jude Law."

If AI proves as successful as the names behind it, he might well be right.