Minnie diva steals the show

Anticipation for Joel Schumacher's $40million film of The Phantom Of The Opera may have focused on its relatively unknown stars Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, but the revelation at last night's premiere was Minnie Driver in the supporting role of the Latin prima donna Carlotta.

Evening Standard film critic Sheila Johnston hails Driver's "rich, comic performance as a temperamental diva".

Jo Berry in Empire magazine says the Briton is "terrific" in the role. And while pre-release reviews on internet fan sites have not been kind to the film as a whole, Rich Cline at thezreview.co.uk notes that "only Driver wins us over, by deliciously chewing the scenery".

Dressed in a series of escalatingly outrageous wigs and costumes and throwing extravagant tantrums, 34-year-old Driver steals the film from beneath the Phantom's deformed, masked nose. In the process, she stages a career comeback on a scale not seen since Boogie Nights rescued Burt Reynolds's career.

Driver first came to attention in the television drama Mr Wroe's Virgins and in the bittersweet 1993 film Circle Of Friends, playing the frumpiest of three Irish college friends, alongside Saffron Burrows and Geraldine O'Rawe.

Later, she showed a more svelte and sassy screen presence in films such as Goldeneye, Grosse Point

Blank and Good Will Hunting. However, the end of her love affair with her Good Will Hunting co-star Matt Damon - he dumped her on air on the Oprah Winfrey show - led to Driver becoming more known for her disastrous love life than for her increasingly lacklustre movie appearances. Films such as High Heels And Low Lifes didn't help much either.

Recently Driver moved into music, releasing a countrystyle album, Everything I've Got In My Pocket, and launched concerts in London with a showcase performance at the Borderline in September. TV appearances included singing on the Jonathan Ross chat show.

Now, though, it seems that a musical film may have put Driver back into the league of major stars.

"It was great fun to play Carlotta," she said at the premiere last night. "I based the role on Maria Callas. I was so knackered by carrying around a 50lb dress and 30lb wig during filming that I just collapsed in bed every night." Although Driver is heard singing over the credits of the film, Carlotta's arias were dubbed by a professional opera singer.

"I could only fake it to a point," she told MTV recently. "I could sing the low stuff. But the high stuff ? Forget about it. It was like glass breaking and dogs start howling when you are singing up there."