Veteran actor ELI WALLACH has been dubbed a "medical miracle" after he headed straight back to work following a life-threatening hip-replacement operation.

The 92-year-old - who has acted in over a hundred films in his lifetime, including 1966 classic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - stunned doctors by recently leaving hospital and going straight back to the studio to shoot two new movies.

His daughter Katherine Wallach tells the New York Post's gossip column PageSix, "He's doing really well. He's sailing. They're calling him a medical miracle, because he defies all the odds. "He's shooting a movie with Jon Heder (called Mama's Boy), and another called Silence with Federico Castelluccio, who played Furio on The Sopranos." And Wallach, who recently starred in hit festive comedy The Holiday, shows no sign of letting up - he has another movie in the pipeline called Liszt for President, due out next year (08).