Can Cantona act

A.� The former Manchester United star most recently appeared in the 1999 film Les Enfants Du Marais (Children of the Marshland). This is the whimsical tale of two friends - Garris and Riton - living in the Loire Valley during the 1930s. Canonta appears as a psychopathic boxer with an edge of violence and menace. In one scene, Cantona's character believes he has been slighted and he turns violent, smashing up a bar and wrestling police. He is finally apprehended and thrown in jail. The story, directed by Jean Becker, was very popular in France. Empire magazine described it as 'beautifully told'.

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Q.� Is this his first film

A.� Cantona was still playing football when he made his first appearance in the 1995 film Le Bonheur est dans le Pre (Happiness Lies in the Meadow). He played a rugby-playing love cheat called Lionel and his brother Joel, with whom he now plays beach football, also has a part. Cantona made the film while he was supended from football. At the time, the film was well-received and Cantona got some pleasing reviews in France and Switzerland.

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Q�.� What else has he done since his retirement from football

A.� He left Old Trafford in 1997, and that year had his first major role in Question d'Honneur,��in which he played a boxing promoter. He went on to play Monseur Le Foix, a French ambassador in the Elizabethan Court in the 1998 movie Elizabeth. In 1998 he starred in a comedy of sorts called Mookie in which�he played a boxer who befriends a talking chimpanzee and a maverick monk in Mexico.

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Q.� Which other footballers have gone on to make careers on screen

A.� One of the best known is former Wimbledon hard man Vinnie Jones who starred in Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He is now being feted by Hollywood. The wartime Bank Holiday favourite Escape to Victory actually starred footballing legends such as Pele, Bobby Moore and Scotland's John Wark in a story about a football game at a concentration camp. Many ex-footballers have also carved careers as media pundits such as former Partick Thistle player Alan Hansen, Gary Linekar and Scotland's Ally McCoist.

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Q.� Are there any other actors with unusual previous careers

A.� The irrepressibly smooth Sean Connery started as a milkman on the streets of Edinburgh before he bcame a household name as 007. Comedian-turned-luvvie Billy Connolly was once a welder in the shipyards of Glasgow before he got his big break as The Big Yin.

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By Katharine MacColl