You can never tell with new Labour politicians, but superficially it would seem unlikely that David Blunkett is a big fan of Eminem.

Given the home secretary’s feeble attempts to clamp down on gun crime, he would be unimpressed by the one-year probation and community service order handed down to such a public figure for brandishing a gun at a man seen kissing his wife. Nor by the fact that it was his second violent altercation involving firearms in 24 hours. Nor by Eminem’s claim to have been involved in a drive-by shooting, his drug-taking, his chainsaw-wielding stage act, or use of the words “faggot”, “bitch” and other cruder sexual expletives.

Eminem, who once revelled in being America’s cultural public enemy number one and a focus of FBI and congressional concern, wouldn’t — in a milder version of his own vernacular — give a toss.With record sales notched up at chainsaw speed to an astonishing 30m, he has now been tipped for an Oscar nomination for his role in 8 Mile, which opens in Britain this week and has already taken more than $100m in America.

The film is laced with biographical similarities to its star’s life. It charts a week in the life of Jimmy, a snotty-nosed, rap-obsessed kid from a single-parent trailer park “family” on the eight-mile line which separates the black ghettoes of Detroit from the white trash beginnings of the suburbs.

That’s the least of it. Jimmy’s mother, just like Eminem’s, is called Debbie and is played by a woman called Kim (Basinger), which is the name of the rapper’s stepsister and his once-and-future wife, who is also portrayed in the steamy sex scenes. Meanwhile, the movie character’s deepest affection is for his kid sister, an appealing child remarkably like Eminem’s own daughter by Kim. Got that?

That the film is labelled fiction at all may be owing to the criticism thrown at its producer Brian Grazer for taking liberties in an earlier film, namely the facts of mathematician John Nash’s life in the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind. Just as homosexual episodes in Nash’s life were omitted, 8 Mile skirts around the more extreme anti-gay and anti-women charges.

The mere fact that 8 Mile is not only produced by Grazer but directed by Curtis “LA Confidential” Hanson has pushed the man whom middle America loved to hate into a whole new ball game, one you might even take your parents to. Given the movie’s “R” rating, most of his fans will have to.

Reviews have been rapturous, comparing 8 Mile’s symbolic message — from trash to success — to Diana Ross’s rise from the ghetto in Mahogany, or Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed Raging Bull, except that 8 Mile’s climax is a verbal “rap battle”, not a boxing match.

Eminem’s acting has been given that double-edged accolade: “natural”. The star famed for his rages did not disappoint, but calmed down when Hanson threatened to walk out. The pair were reconciled to the extent that Hanson reckons he might have found a bona fide movie star: “He has that thing — call it charisma — that makes you interested.”

Until now, apart from legions of sociopathic teenage fans drawn from the global detritus of the dysfunctional American dream, the main people interested in Eminem have been the police. When he toured Britain he was investigated for taking drugs and alcohol on stage, but got away with claims — countered on the fan grapevine — that it was just an act.

His concerts have attracted protests by gay and feminist groups claiming that his lyrics incite violence, charges waved away with the glib excuse that the most obnoxious opinions belong not to the singer but to his fictional alter ego Slim Shady.

But then the line between brutally disillusioned cynicism and bitter ironic parody has been as slim in Eminem’s career as that between his rap “poetry” fictional stories and an autobiography in lurid rhyme. “Eminem” comes from the initials of his real name, Marshall Mathers III, which displays a curiously all-American enthusiasm for dynastic lineage given that he never knew his father.

He was born in October 1972 near Kansas City, Missouri. But it was Detroit, where after a door-to-door existence he arrived aged 12 with his mother, that was to become “home”, at least in terms of a bleak backdrop. He was no good at school and led a teenage life flipping burgers, obsessed with comic books and black rap music.

Pretty soon, the girl whom his mother had taken in as a 12-year-old and started out as a sister, became much more. By the age of 15 he had been spotted by a rap producer called Marky Bass, who claims to have hit on the idea of using shock lyrics to market him as the “Marilyn Manson of rap” to Interscope, which is still his record label.