What do Macaulay Culkin, Mark Hamill and Drew Barrymore have in common? Too much too soon. If your fame and glory peak before you reach your 20s it can only mean one thing: burning out too soon.

The career of 81-year-old Eileen Essell took the opposite course. Starting her acting career at the Oxford Playhouse while completing her finals, Essell, of Guildford Grove, Greenwich, is now on the Hollywood big screen. She plays a lead role alongside Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore in Danny Devito's latest film, Our House, out now in cinemas nationwide.

Originally entitled Duplex, the dark comedy is about a newlywed couple's dream home. Little did they know when they bought the perfect duplex their rent-controlled tenant upstairs, an old lady called Mrs Connolly, would be a housemate from hell. Life disintegrates for the newlyweds, played by Stiller and Barrymore, but they discover getting rid of the frail Mrs Connolly is much more than a household chore.

Good luck struck Essell late in life. She spent 13 years in theatre before meeting her playwright husband Gerard McLarnon. Feeling she could no longer "bomb about", the actress started teaching drama and had her son, Fergus, also now an actor.

Then seven years ago two years after Gerard died a family friend asked her to perform in a play he had translated.

Essell recalled: "Although the gap was 30 years, I had no qualms at all. I thought, sure!"

During that performance an agent spotted the actress and told her: "Look, you are very old, you have got white hair and all your marbles. I think you are marketable."

Essell said: "It was very cynical but I thought, come on, you have got nothing to lose. Since then I have been lucky."

And so began a career on screen, playing roles in popular shows including Doctors and The Bill. Now you can see this elderly talent on the big screen.

The Hollywood experience would daunt a lot of people but not Essell. Danny Devito even had her join a big night out. The director warned her: "We are going to take you out and get you drunk. Tomorrow will be a nightmare!"

She conceded. "We went out and had a lot to eat and drink. I felt very hung over the next morning and I had nothing to take except Arnica."

And Devito was right. From 10am they gave 60 non-stop, four-minute interviews with one hour's lunchbreak. Essell remembers the nightmare: "They all asked the same thing but you couldn't go to sleep just in case they asked something different."

However, the actress is used to long days. Throughout the filming she would often be picked up at 6am and sometimes not get back to the hotel until 2am. How did she do it?

Essell stated resolutely: "Yoga is what keeps me going. People my age are having hip replacements. I do a one-and-a-half-hour class once a week and half an hour every day. Yoga gave me the stamina for the role."

The next minute she has me learning yoga moves. This is harder than it looks and had me aching the next day the last thing you would expect from an interview with a lady of 81.

Fitness was vital for the physically-demanding role in Our House. Essell even learnt how to box in an old-fashioned style from professional stuntmen. She recalled, chuckling, how Ben Stiller was asked how she stood up to it and he had replied: "She could knock the pants off all of us."

Essell admitted: "I am quite a tough cookie."

The actress was made to look a lot older in the film with an uncomfortable rubber mask of wrinkles. The quirky character also had a parrot, which had three understudies because it got tired easily.

This is not the end of Essell's Hollywood career. She also makes an appearance in Marc Forster's Neverland, starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, which is due to be released by Miramax on October 29. She was approached for the role, a part she describes as nice and sincere, while she was making Our House.

She has fond memories of the heartthrob star of the movie: "I was wearing an Edwardian costume and lying on a settee. We all had fans because it was so terribly hot and Johnny Depp came up, knelt beside me and fanned me. I thought, there are girls who would swoon if they were fanned by Johnny Depp! He was so sweet. He was trying to give up smoking because of his two young children. He is such a lovely person."

And it seems he is not the only one to have taken a shine to the British visitor. Devito insisted they kept in touch via email. When Essell said she didn't have a computer, the actor gave her a laptop at the wrap party. After a few lessons from her neighbour's son, they are now in regular contact.

She also went to a dinner with Devito and his wife, Rhea Perlman, where everyone, including the family's three dogs, were milling around the kitchen.

"I can't believe my husband and I used to watch him in Taxi and her in Cheers. I think they are just working actors. It is marvellous. It is not what people think about stars. They are proper human beings."

Things are just getting better and better for Hollywood's new star.

"I had to keep the wolf from the door all these years. Being in film and TV and then getting the opportunity to travel with commercials has been so fortunate. The more I think back on these things the more I feel nothing is wasted. Great things fall into place. The thing is to keep an open mind."