Three years ago, Michael Clarke Duncan would return each night to his cheap Los Angeles motel room after a round of fruitless auditions and watch roaches skitter around him. One evening an actor on television caught his eye. "I said, 'I could do that if somebody gave me a chance.' Then I said, 'You have no life, no money, and you're talking to bugs on a wall. Something is wrong here.' "

These days, something is very right with Duncan, who brings his 6'5", 315-lb. frame to the role of the gentle convict John Coffey in The Green Mile, which opened on Dec. 10, his 42nd birthday. "He's delightful and soulful," says Mile director Frank Darabont. "He was more than up to the challenge." Adds Duncan: "I'm banking on The Green Mile to take me to another level."

He has already come a long way. Duncan and his sister Judith, now 47 and an AT&T rep, were raised on Chicago's South Side by single mom Jean. He attended Alcorn State University in Mississippi, but he dropped out when his mother fell ill, then took jobs bouncing at clubs and digging ditches for a gas company. A stint as a security guard for a theater troupe hooked him on acting, so he relocated to L.A. in 1995. During his stay in the roach motel, he began landing tough-guy roles; in '98, his Armageddon costar Bruce Willis recommended him to Darabont. But the never-married actor, who lives alone in L.A., isn't looking for someone to share in his success: "Right now, it's just me and the business—and she's being pretty good to me."