Aladdin, Grand Opera House, York, until January 5

SO why is Jaason Simmons spelt with an extra 'a' in Jason?

"My grandfather is Austrian, and the Jason is supposed to have a double dot above the 'a', instead of the second 'a', but it's more distinctive with the double 'a'!" says the Australian who has had young girls cheering boisterously at the Grand Opera House in scenes unprecedented at a York pantomime.

The reason? Jaason used to play the devilishly cocksure Aussie lifeguard Logan Fowler in Baywatch. He left the series as long as 1997 after a three-year run but the legacy lives on. "Because of syndication, the show still runs and runs and runs, and the publicity the show created still persists," he says.

Hence the schoolgirl whoops whenever Jaason makes a golden stage entrance as the Genie of the Lamp in Aladdin. Following his debut in Torquay last Christmas, this is second pantomime season in England, his first in the county of birth of his mother, Yorkshire. "She was born in Baildon, outside Bradford, and I'm hoping to go and look at the street where she lived."

It was his father's side of the family that settled in Australasia. "They lived in London and took the five-pound ticket to Tasmania when my dad was five in 1948/49, just after the war," says Jaason, who reflects on the plus points and negatives of his place of birth.

"Tasmania is a lot like England in a way: it's very diverse, like the British countryside but with rainforest and some beaches thrown in, and the weather can change four times in a day.

"It's a great place to be raised and to retire but in the meantime you have to make that great leap of faith and go live your dream or whatever you want to do with your life," he says. "I do still have a place down there that I go to twice a year and it's the only place I feel truly at home."

Jaason left Tasmania at 18, first for Sydney and then America at 19. "My father died when I was seven, so I was a pretty introverted kid and it would have been easy to stay at home but if I was going to make any type of performer, I had to make the step up and go to America," he says. "So I went there, without a permit, as anyone does; did a couple of years' training in Los Angeles with Marlon Brando's teacher, Sandford Meisree; went home to my family; did a job in Australia; went back to LA to pick up my gear but called in at the Baywatch office the day before I was due to leave, and I found myself signing a five-year deal!

"I went back to Australia, did a movie there, and then returned to LA and started that crazy job."

Crazy? "They see an Australian, and they make him this womanising, hunky Aussie, and Baywatch was just a publicity machine that churned all these stories, so it was rather a bizarre first job to get in America."

So bizarre - not least being stalked - that he eventually asked to be excused from his contract "I'd started the show before finishing my training and realised it was not my cup of tea," he says. "It was just too much. I was making the tabloids every week for nothing, with complete misinformation, and there were a few stalkers, and in the end I was fighting for a story-line," he recalls. "I was thinking 'I'm in Baywatch, I'm fighting for a story, it's time to go', but it was a great training ground to understand the American entertainment system. It's all a facade; everything is based on illusion."

Jaason, who had been raised on an island by his mother and grandmother, needed to feel rooted again in his mid-twenties. "So I took time out to see if acting really was for me or whether it was just bull****," he says.

After the break, he completed his theatre studies and did some stage work in London and Sydney.

"I realised these were the kind of actors I wanted to be with: you may not earn as much money but I like the energy of theatre: with TV, it's just packaged and fed to the world without knowing if it's good or not."

Baywatch has been consigned to the Simmons history as "just a chapter that went on".

"Now, as an actor, what I like to do is travel between LA, London and Sydney, and I have a base still in LA only because it is between the other two," says 32-year-old Jaason, who shares his home in the Hollywood hills with his pet iguana Aeon Flux (and yes, Aeon is in good hands while Jaason is away).

"I'm going to be in London more next year: I like the energy of London and I feel more at home there than I ever did in LA. LA was something I went into naively but I learnt a lot, and it's a good place to be if you can leave it two or three times a year!" he says.

He had never seen a pantomime when he finally took up one of many invitations to do panto last year in Torquay. "I thought 'Why not; there's not a lot of other theatre work about at this time of year'. Many people aren't prepared to drop the ego thing, but if you are, fine: once you accept it's for children and has been since the 1800s, then great. I'm happy to dress up in red sequins and gold-lined pantaloons!"

After all, he likes gold: "I painted my iguana water-based gold because if people see he's painted, they'll know he's a pet."

That sounds dangerously like LA thinking but Jaason quickly cuts through the Californian nonsense. "He's not the friendliest-looking creature, as he looks like a little dinosaur, but he's so low maintenance as a pet, walking up and down his mirror trying to pick himself up as he's so vain."

What a metaphor for the LA lifestyle, and yet a pantomime in York and his latest movie, an environmental Scottish variation on Alien called The Devil's Tattoo, suggest Jaason Simmons has a most healthy perspective on enjoying a rounded actor's life.

Aladdin, Grand Opera House, York, until January 5. Box office: 01904 671818.

Updated: 10:05 Friday, December 27, 2002