Widya points us to SMH where they have a report on the boost for the actor behind Cleigg Lars:

Jack Thompson has been getting lots of fan mail lately. That should be no surprise considering he's one of the country's finest actors and star of such films as Petersen, Sunday Too Far Away, Caddie, Breaker Morant, The Club and The Sum of Us.

What is surprising is that he's had more than 100 requests for autographs and photos before his latest film is even released. That's part of the deal when you play Anakin Skywalker's stepfather in the new Star Wars episode.

When Episode II - Attack of the Clones opens today, Thompson jokes that he might need a separate mailbox for Cliegg Lars, a farmer who marries Anakin's mother on the planet Tatooine.

''I've never been in a part two of anything, let alone being a part of this extraordinary epic. And although I've had fan mail from people who've seen The Sum of Us, who've seen Breaker Morant on television, who've seen even Sunday Too Far Away, and I've had quite a bit of American fan mail as a result of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I've never had this amount of fan mail associated with a particular character."