Home, sweet home, not Hollywood

There was a very good reason - the York-born actor, who found international success in The Full Monty, had dashed home from the set in Prague to be at the birth of his first child.

"The director very kindly said, 'go', so I disappeared for three or four scenes from the film," he says. "I got back home and spent a couple of days waiting until the baby was born. They kept phoning from Prague saying, 'we need you back soon' and I told them, 'I'm doing everything I can, but it's out of my hands'.

"I did want to be there at the birth - and I was. It's an extraordinary experience just because there's not a lot you can do to help. It's really frustrating. I found it very stressful mentally because I think blokes are always looking for a solution to a problem and there isn't with giving birth. You can just be supportive."

Daughter Ruby is a year old now and the film Addy was making at the time, A Knight's Tale, opens in UK cinemas this weekend. Apart from five weeks in Hollywood at the beginning of this year, making a new version of the H G Wells classic story The Time Machine, the actor hasn't worked since Ruby entered his life. That's by choice.

"I didn't want to work just for the sake of it because I have a one-year-old reason to be at home," he says. "I have a little baby so the time I have at home is more precious than it was before. It means I've been there for the times when she's doing new stuff each day and finding new things."

As the chubby stripper in The Full Monty, Addy became known in America and something of a pin-up in unlikely places. His naked body, with only a bag of chips to cover his modesty, appeared on giant billboards around London when the film was released and he found himself classed as a sex symbol, although he was surprised to learn that his picture was adorning the wall of a gay nightclub.

The success of that film gave him the chance to pick and choose his roles, including becoming Fred Flintstone in the second live action Flintstones movie - something he couldn't resist, he says, because Steven Spielberg was the executive producer. The Full Monty also gave him the freedom, financially, to say 'no' to jobs he didn't want to do. And it meant he could buy a house in his home city of York, which he happily chose as somewhere to reside over London or even Hollywood.

"I lived in London for ten years. I went down to drama school and stayed because that's where all the interviews and auditions are," he says. "But I got a bit sick of it really. I found myself doing a lot of work for Hull Truck theatre company, like a nine-month tour, so I was paying for a flat in London and for digs wherever we toured."

So, after The Full Monty, he moved back to Yorkshire. "I would much rather be somewhere that's cheaper to live and where you have a better quality of life," he explains over lunch in one of his favourite York restaurants, Cafe Concerto, in the shadow of the Minster. "Fortunately it coincided with The Full Monty coming out and meant I didn't have to be in London so much. They have seen my work and know what I can do, so will give me a ring if they want to meet."

Unusually, Addy is a performer who's happy to turn his back on big bucks. Cashing in on The Full Monty, he could have gone to America, taken every part that was offered and sat soaking up the sun by the swimming pool. Instead, he chose carefully, turning down the Matt Dillon lead role in gross-out comedy There's Something About Mary in favour of a supporting role in the Michael Keaton family comedy Jack Frost and then The Flintstones sequel.

"I never became an actor to make money. I would have gone into banking or something like that if I wanted that. There are other ways of becoming rich. I did it because I like to act. In England, money doesn't come into it," he says.

His first paid job was as a £95-a-week acting assistant stage manager at York Theatre Royal. When he was offered a full-time post, he quit his A-level studies with his parents' approval. "I was working at the theatre and not doing any homework. They knew I was earning money and it was in a place I enjoyed working," he says.

There's a chance he may even return there in the future, with star billing this time. "When I find something I want to do here in York, then I will because it would be nice to be working at home. It's just finding the right thing," he says.

To some extent, he admits his success was a case of being in the right place at the right time when The Full Monty was released in America. He was in the States, doing publicity for the film, when it became a big hit and that success reflected on him as he was there at the time. Who knows what might have happened if he'd accepted the offer of a week's work in a Ruth Rendell TV drama instead of opting to cross the Atlantic to promote the movie? What Addy knew he didn't want to do was move to Hollywood, although he has worked on several US movies in the wake of The Full Monty. "Los Angeles itself is a weird place because it's all about movies, full of people who are involved in movies or want to be involved in movies. There's not a lot else. You can't wander into a pub and talk to someone about plumbing," he says.

"The work itself is geared up to making films so they have all the facilities, so you're not seeing if you can borrow a camera for half a day as you do over here. It's very much a business for making money. So I go in, do the job and get out. I'm happy to go there and do the work but not move there." York suits him well because "we have family here, and friends. It's somewhere we know and like. It's one of the most beautiful cities I have spent any time in."

He gets recognised in the city but reckons most of the people who know he lives in York are quite blase about it. Tourists are a different matter. They don't expect to see someone they know from The Full Monty walking around. But the level of celebrity is one he feels he can cope with.

"I would hate it to become awkward to get out. I know there are some people who just can't leave the house without a bit of a scrum. I don't think I'd like that."

A Knight's Tale (PG) opens in cinemas on August 31.