With a reputation for discovering talent, director Joel Schumacher is riding high as his new film is released. Steve Pratt reports.

DIRECTOR Joel Schumacher has an eye for spotting talent. He gave Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland and Colin Farrell, Hollywood's current hottest leading man, their big breaks on screen.

He says: "I've been credited with discovering a lot of young people, but you'd hire them too," says the costumer designer turned film-maker.

"They're unique. There's a reason they've gone on to have big careers, because they have something. If you saw a hundred young women for Flatliners and Julia Roberts walked into your office and you didn't hire her, you shouldn't be in the business."

Schumacher is rare in Hollywood - a director unafraid to take risks or speak his mind. A glance at his credits shows De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Michael Douglas and George Clooney among those he's directed in films such as Lost Boys, Flatliners, The Client, Falling Down, and two Batman blockbusters.

Awaiting release is a film about murdered Irish journalist Veronica Guerin starring Cate Blanchett. First comes Phone Booth, with Farrell trapped in a public call box by a sniper threatening to kill him if he hangs up.

The film was much delayed. After a bidding war in 1998, Fox bought the script and offered it to him, with Mel Gibson set to star. After Schumacher went off to make other films, Jim Carrey and Will Smith were among those linked with it.

In the spring of 2000, Phone Booth returned to Schumacher with Farrell, the Irish actor on whom he'd taken a chance by casting him as an American in the war film Tigerland, as star.

After completion, the film suffered a further delay when events on September 11 and the Washington sniper conspired to delay the release until now.

Phone Booth was shot in just two weeks. "We were all terrified, I know I was," says Schumacher. "I was more frightened on the first day of filming that I've ever been, even on my very first films. I thought, 'this is truly insane'. I had that sick sort of panicky feeling you get when you haven't studied for a test in school. That inexorable horror when there's no turning back and you're just stuck."

Whatever the budget, he points out, you never know if a film is going to work. "When you're doing a big franchise, like a John Grisham or a Batman movie, you know expectations will be very high, so that's a different kind of pressure.

"It's interesting because, although some of my early movies were big hits, they were inexpensive films with unknowns."

His next movie is already well-known - the screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical The Phantom Of The Opera. Schumacher was all set to direct the movie in Munich and Prague 14 years ago

"Then Andrew and Sarah divorced, and there were lots of legal things to be settled. A couple of years went by, and when Andrew came back with it, I was already doing other things.

"Andrew and his current wife and I stay close. Every time I come to London, we go to the theatre or have dinner. This Christmas he said, 'come on, do it'. I was going to say no, then I thought it really would be fun to do. So it started again.

"I said to him the other day that I'm really glad we didn't do it 14 years ago. I'm a better director now, I hope. I have so much more experience as a film-maker that I can probably do a better job."

The idea of making Phantom remains scary to him. "You don't want to fail, and there are so many people who love it," he says. "Then I think of all the people who love the music and couldn't afford to see it in the theatre, or people want to show their kids something. A movie is still one of the cheapest entertainments."

* Phone Booth (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.