I can't believe my luck, says Eragon star

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Edward Speleers, 19, had only performed in school Shakespeare plays before he beat hundreds of young rivals to take the lead in Eragon.

Speaking after the UK premiere in Leicester Square yesterday, the British actor said: "My friends have all just finished their A-levels and are about to go on their gap years, and here I am acting in a film opposite some of my biggest childhood heroes."

He added: "I was appearing in Hamlet in my school play and I heard of this audition and knew I had to go for it.

"My father called me up and told me after the second round that I'd got the part. I didn't believe it then and sometimes I still don't believe it now."

Speleers, who grew up in Croydon and went to boarding school at Eastbourne College, stars as a 15-year-old farm boy who finds a dragon egg and embarks on an epic journey to save his home from an evil king.

The film, also starring fellow Britons Sienna Guillory and Robert Carlyle, is based on Christopher Paolini's bestselling debut fantasy novel.

Much of what appears on screen was added digitally after the shoot. "It was a very surreal experience making the film," he said. "For a lot of the time the dragon was basically an orange tennis ball."

Speleers' director Stefen Fangmeier said: "When I first saw him he was the third of 25 finalists and I knew he would be the one.

"I called up the casting director and I couldn't even remember his first name. I just said, 'That's Ed with the blond hair and piercing blue eyes.' He reminds me of the young Harrison Ford in Star Wars. He has a chiselled look and a determination. I'm sure he's going to be a star of the future."