My hols: Omid Djalili

Then we started hearing reports on the news about forest fires that were devastating parts of the country. When the sky turned an apocalyptic red, and ash began to fall onto the hotel, it was time to leave. The hotel rep told everyone not to panic, but to leave within four hours.

So we ignored his instructions, panicked, jumped in our hire car and raced the forest fires back to Athens. At one point, the fire had crossed the road, forcing us to veer around it. It was pretty scary, but quite exciting, and by the time I had retold the episode a few times, I had personally hosed the flames and prevented Athens from burning.

My ideal holiday would be to go somewhere by myself. For most of my life, I have been surrounded by people. My parents used to fill the house with sick Iranians, who paid to stay while awaiting treatment and occupied my bedroom. I had to sleep in the lounge, but only after they had all finished sitting there and gone to bed.

I used to dream of being in a house on my own, and one of the best holidays I ever had was when I first left home to go to university in Northern Ireland. I hired a cottage in Coleraine and stayed there, by myself, watching political party conferences by day and Just Good Friends by night, ordering curries and reading. It gave me a complete sense of freedom, which is what holidays should be about.

We had only two family holidays, both to Iran to visit relatives. The first I was too young to remember, but the second is rooted in my mind because of the horrors it contained. I was six years old and we went to stay with my grandfather in Tehran. It was alternately very hot and very cold; I was unused to the food and sick most of the time; and, when I was well enough to venture out, the local Tehranian youth stole my western toys.

To complete the happy holiday, there was no sewer system, and I nearly died after falling into the pit of human excrement where everyone emptied their various receptacles. I've never been back, but I would love to go, not least because Iran is probably one of the few places where I will be able to waltz through customs.

My first thought when those planes hit the Twin Towers was that travelling for me would never be the same again. I'd already encountered a few problems, because of having a threatening name, but since 9/11 I've learnt to allow extra time to be detained by customs officers.

On one occasion, I went to America to film the sitcom Whoopi, with Whoopi Goldberg, and had to wait several hours while they phoned the production office to find out whether the sitcom was for real or just an elaborate ploy by a well-known terrorist. In the past year, it's got better, as they've started to recognise me. Instead of searching me, customs officers ask for my autograph.

Arab countries are easier and one of the most unusual places I've been is the village of Aït Benhaddou, in Morocco, where we filmed part of Gladiator. The village is in the Atlas Mountains, near Ouarzazate. It was incredible to be among the local Berber people, who still live simple lives, largely untouched by the modern world - apart from large film crews and Russell Crowe.

I went back to Morocco a year later to make the film Spy Game and discovered that I had become a huge celebrity there - I was in The Mummy, which had been showing four times a day, prior to our arrival, on Moroccan national television. I've got a great photograph of myself surrounded by an autograph-hungry mob in Casablanca.

In the background, Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, the big stars of the film, are hovering completely unknown and unnoticed. That sort of reception is so much better than being under suspicion in America."

Omid Djalili talked to Lizzie Enfield