British actor Jim Broadbent has won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival.

The star clinched the accolade for his role in the film Topsy Turvy, directed by Mike Leigh, in which he plays Gilbert of the operetta team Gilbert and Sullivan.

The 50-year-old actor's long career on stage and screen includes parts in The Crying Game, Bullets Over Broadway and the BBC's Only Fools and Horses.

He grew up in Lincolnshire and went to school in Reading, beginning his professional career as acting assistant stage manager at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

His breakthrough came in 1976 when he appeared in Ken Campbell's Illuminatus.

His other credits include playing Pod in the film version of Mary Norton's The Borrowers, ITV's greyhound saga Gone to the Dogs and was one half of the comedy stage duo the National Theatre of Brent.

Other awards at the festival:

• Golden Lion for best film went to Zhang Yimou for the Chinese movie Not One Less

• The jury's special prize went to The Wind Will Carry Us by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami

• French actress Nathalie Baye was voted best actress for her role in A Pornographic Liaison

• Chinese director Zhang Yuan won the special prize for directing for Seventeen Years

• The award for an emerging actor or actress went to Nina Proll in the Austrian film Nordland

• The best first film by a director award went to Italy's Giovanni Davide Maderna for This is the Garden

• American comedian Jerry Lewis was honoured with a lifetime achievement award.