Jason Bateman knows the odd position he is in: famous, but not very famous, known, but not massively well known. “Nobody knows who the hell I am; I get it,” he says, with the dry sense of humour that is his stock-in-trade. The star of the cult hit TV series Arrested Development has appeared in key roles in nine big Hollywood films in the past two years, including the smash-hit Juno and Will Smith's summer spectacular Hancock. Soon you won't be able to get away from him.

“Arrested Development played late at night in England, so I got a lot of coke addicts and meth freaks. Great. So you've seen me but you just don't remember me.” When I suggest that will change since he is in so many films now, he quips again. “So I am a whore, too.”

Bateman has had a longer than usual journey to movie stardom. He has been a celebrity in the United States since the age of 12, when he appeared in Little House on the Prairie, and spent his teen years hopping from one cute kid sitcom role to another. When Arrested Development aired in 2003, it was described as his comeback show, even though he had then been working steadily for 22 years.

Now 39, his looks have matured but he still retains a wide-eyed open-ness and an all-American optimism that is not too far from Tom Hanks or Greg Kinnear, other former TV stars who have graduated on to the big screen as Capra-esque idealists.

In Hancock, he is just that, a do-gooding PR man who first appears trying to persuade a boardroom full of suits to hand over their profits to charity. When his life is saved by John Hancock (Smith), LA's local superhero who has fallen into a mess of despair and public derision, he sets out to try to reshape his image.

“My character sees life through rose-coloured glasses so he doesn't understand how people can't see the positive side of Hancock,” Bateman says. “I like being the everyman. I like being the tour guide, the one who tethers whatever absurdity might be in a film and helps make that tangible to the audience.”

But Bateman has a caustic edge that makes him more intriguing than your average Hollywood goodie-two-shoes. “You should see the girl I've got in the bathroom,” he deadpans when I suggest he is the new movie nice guy. “She's all tied up. However nice somebody is, there is always something else there, otherwise it's not real, it's too contrived.”

He is third lead in Hancock behind Smith and Charlize Theron and has no illusions about how the film was crafted around Smith's persona. “Make no mistake, we are all lucky to hang out in Will's world,” he chuckles. “This is him 100 per cent. He knows so much about this particular genre of summer films and he wanted to get a little bit more ambitious with it and bring in people who are not necessarily predisposed to one of these popcorn films. ”

The movie is certainly more daring than your average action adventure. In one scene, Smith's Hancock threatens two thugs that he will shove one of their heads up the other's bottom. Next scene, the threat is carried out. You don't get that in Spider-Man.

“I just try not to do too much on screen,” Bateman explains. “Me just being me is kind of fine. I am not one of those people who wrings his hands and tries to figure out how to play my character right and do a bunch of research and all that crap.”

Bateman is the son of a movie-producer father and an English air stewardess mother. He and his sister Justine both got work as child actors.

A strange way to grow up? “I was always very aware that I did not want to end up like some of my peers who were not tethered to reality,” he says.

Not to say that Bateman wasn't a wild child. He partied hard and in his early twenties got into car racing. “Fortunately that subset of celebrity journalism was not there when I was staying out late as a teenager and through my twenties,” he says. “I was really trying to catch up because I had worked so much when I was a little kid and didn't get to go to college. My twenties were my fraternity life. And I got away with it.”

Now, married to the actress Amanda Anka, the daughter of the veteran singer Paul, and the father of a baby daughter, he pleads stability. “I am smarter now,” he says. “I drive a station wagon.”

He says he has no regrets about working as a child and that there were plenty of benefits, but he also stresses that there were negatives. Despite his success, Bateman has no intention of encouraging his daughter Francesca into acting. “She will never get anywhere near a Screen Actors Guild card. It's a real shitty way to make a living because you can have all the ambition and work ethic and discipline in the world and not be guaranteed employment.”

Bateman regularly moved series until his long-term employment on Arrested Development, playing Michael Bluth, the only sane member of a wealthy Californian family in crisis. The series charmed critics and won awards but failed to score big ratings. “I owe my adult success to the show,” he says. “America didn't really watch it but people in LA did and those are the ones who hire us. It gave me an entrance to movies - which was lucky because I had somewhat exhausted my welcome in TV.” Arrested Development made stars of Bateman, Michael Cera and Will Arnett and put them on the crest of a new comedy wave in Hollywood. “Right now, this deadpan, dry comedy is what really makes me laugh and I am happy it's in vogue,” he says. “Like Judd Apatow, Sacha Baron Cohen or Christopher Guest.

“That tone is, of course, imported from Britain. In fact my mother was hugely responsible for giving me my sense of humour because that above-all-else-do-not-embarrass-yourself, John Cleese thing is deep inside me.”

Bateman has a priceless cameo over the end credits of the current Apatow hit Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well as a small role in Ricky Gervais's Hollywood debut This Side of the Truth. But his game plan is not to specialise in comedy but to build a career as a dramatic actor in films such as Juno or the Iraq action movie The Kingdom.

He has just finished a role in the Hollywood film version of the British TV drama State of Play opposite Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck, playing the character of Dominic Foy, the part originally taken by Marc Warren. The director was the Scottish wunderkind Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland).

“In this version Foy is a bisexual fetish club promoter who has some information that Russell's character wants, which he is not willing to give. It's about a 15-page segment of the film and my character goes from A to Z in 15 pages.”

Bateman also confesses that starring in the lead role in films terrifies him and that coming second to someone like Will Smith makes him feel more comfortable. “If I am going to do a comedy, I might be near the top of the call sheet and then if it succeeds or fails, it's going to be down to me. In drama, I am protected by big stars above me. Hancock is Will's film and will do incredibly well. I am lucky to be associated with the cool kids.” He has just signed for the lead role in Extract, the new comedy from Mike Judge (Office Space, Beavis & Butthead).

A big-screen version of Arrested Development is planned for next year. “When it was on TV, if you missed one word the whole third act could be blown for you. And TV is a different experience. You come home and you've got to finish a call so you miss the first ten minutes or you get snacky and you go to the fridge and you miss another two minutes, so it's a different experience to film.”

What does Bateman think of the superstardom that will surely follow? “I've got a little bit of access right now and a little bit of relevancy and so I am trying not to screw it up,” he says modestly. “Basically longevity is the goal. It's been 30 years now and I'd love to get another 30.”

Hancock is released nationwide on July 2

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