Akshay Kumar once had a reputation as a Casanova, dating fellow stars including Shilpa Shetty, but he now insists he is happiest sitting in a remote cave with his young son.

In an interview during the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFAs) in Leeds, north England, he said that he and Shetty were still friends but that he would not follow her footsteps by forging a career outside India.

"No, I wouldn't think about doing it yet," he told.

"I get offers for doing Hollywood film roles but I'm not satisfied with that... I wouldn't get into it, I would still wait, I'm very happy being in the Indian film industry rather than going anywhere else."

Akki added that his upcoming projects included the martial arts movie which should be released in late 2008 and involved giant American producers Warner Bros. and the Chinese government.

"It's all about the journey of this guy who's basically a vegetable cutter and that's being played by me and it's a journey from here to there.

"It's a very emotional and a very stunt-orientated film." he added that it was "very easy" for him to get into the role: "My real life also, before I started getting into the film industry, I was a cook."

But he has come a long way from his humble beginnings and now takes regular breaks from the busy life of a Bollywood superstar in the caves around Mumbai.

"We need it, once a month we need it, it's a great place to be, it's just a combination of mountains and sea together and a small huge cave and we just take our food and we just sit down there... I'm surprised that nobody knows about it," he said.

"I love wandering around on mountains and we found this kind of place so it's me and my son's secret, we don't speak about that to anybody and we don't tell them where it is."