Today he’s a long way from the sun-drenched climes of Los Angeles, where his family are. The family have recently relocated to America, where he filmed one series of police fantasy Awake before it was cancelled, despite it being critically well received. Liverpool-born Jason is married to filmmaker Emma Hewitt, with whom he has two children, Lily, 11, and Ruby, eight. “I doubt whether that’s going to enhance my reputation as a sex symbol.”

“I’ve just finished playing a hideous evangelical fundamentalist with three wives, including a teenage one he raped, on a film in Mexico. “But I’ve played many a non-heroic figure and I’m sure I will again too. You hit a bad guy and you’re thought of as a sex symbol because you’re doing some heroic stuff. “You’re a sex symbol if you do something sexy on screen. “I’m glad there are people who fall in love with what they think is me, but the people who actually know me hopefully find me a good friend, a smart sounding-board or whatever. “There’s no part of me that thinks I’m tough or sexy or cool.

But – guess what – in Case Histories, I win.

I mean, yesterday, I had a fight with a guy who could have taken me out with his hands tied behind his back. “It’s lovely that people like watching the work I do, but not for a second do I take any of that seriously. “And my friends are monumentally unimpressed with me. “But in my own life I’m just happy if I’m not the figure of utter disdain from my children and wife. “You could spend your entire life googling yourself and seeing what people have said and written about you. “I know there’s stuff on the internet,” he said. Meeting the press at the filming base at the foot of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh on a winter’s day, he’s entertaining the concept of the “sex symbol” and discussing being the subject of several “hot mess” compilations on YouTube – all smouldering in slow-motion, a look through the highlights and recovering hairlines of his career. The 49-year-old Hollywood actor, star of BBC Scotland’s Case Histories, carries the sex symbol tag reluctantly. He’s just happy his kids don’t laugh at him. HE might have won a reputation as a battle-hardened telly hunk but Jason Isaacs isn’t having any of it.

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