TEA Leoni no longer has autograph-hunters rushing past her to get to her X-Files husband David Duchovny because the blonde actress is now a Hollywood star in her own right.

In recent years she has managed to turn TV failure into success in movies and she's even survived taking a break to have a child.

Steven Spielberg thinks so highly of the 34-year-old Leoni that he's cast her in Jurassic Park III, which is being filmed in Los Angeles.

Leoni is delighted about her change of fortunes in Hollywood, particularly as her decision to take two years off to have her first baby would be considered by many Hollywood actresses to be career suicide.

Daughter Madelaine is now 20 months old and Leoni is back in business with a new starring role.

In Family Man, a re-working of the 1948 classic It's A Wonderful Life, she co-stars with Nicolas Cage in the story of a callous Manhattan executive, who wakes up on Christmas morning to find his lifestyle has changed. Instead of the life he was leading he is married to a former flame, has two kids and a dead-end job.

Although spooked at first, Jack (Cage) comes to appreciate his new life, picking up parenting tips from young Annie and falling in love again with Kate.

But just as he's settling into his new life, the "glimpse" at his alternative ends and he rebounds to reality.

Cage is good value. He is brash and arrogant in his Wall Street persona but clumsy as the family man, scrimping and saving to keep the family in food and clothes.

Leoni is the perfect wife despairing whenever Jack wastes money and desperate for affection. There's a pleasant screen chemistry between the couple but the film comes unstuck badly in the final reel when Jack, in his Wall Street guise, turns up on Kate's doorstep and tries to woo her back on the day she is due to fly to Paris.