Sure enough, there was Billy, all 5ft 7in of him, with his undeniably pixie-esque features and tufty hair. "Oh, Billy," sighed the teacher, "some days you're here and I don't even know you are."

"And I always thought I was something of a character," muses Boyd. "Obviously not."

Self-deprecating, quiet, modest, feet clamped firmly to the ground. Apply all of the above to Scotland's latest ambassador to the world of red carpets and clapper boards, along with a prevailing air of not quite being there. You can sense where his printing teacher was coming from.

Boyd is not long back from a long shoot in Mexico, working on Peter Weir's upcoming film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, in which he'll star alongside Russell Crowe. He's snuggled into a sofa in Edinburgh's The Hub cafe, his head lop-sided like a cocker spaniel, those clear green eyes staring out against pale skin. He's dressed in scruffy jeans and a faded biker jacket, talking in quiet, understated tones. Nobody stops, stares or - given his current status as number one in this magazine's most eligible list - drools with lust at the sight of him. He is, quite simply, 'the film star who isn't there'.

But this isn't a man who turns on the charm at the hint of a camera flash or the whirr of a journalist's dictaphone. He is, instead, a man who finds one-to-one interviews "quite nice, sitting down having a chat", but who squirms like a ticklish schoolboy when asked about his private life. And he's a man who, despite starring in what will undoubtedly be this Christmas's blockbuster, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, plans to spend Hogmanay in Penrith - albeit with Elijah Wood.

Has his life really changed since he first gambolled on to the silver screen as Pippin in the Tolkien classic? "Well, it means that people who might not have seen my work can now see it," he says. "But, for me, success isn't all about the big movies or who you're working with. It's about working with people who you want to work with and who you respect. And yes, my career is important to me, but it's not at number one. The main way that The Lord of the Rings changed my life is in the friends I've made from it."

Boyd knows, having done the publicity circuit for The Fellowship of the Ring at precisely this time last year, that he is regurgitating old stuff. Of the 15 months he spent filming the trilogy in New Zealand, he says, "It has now become a bit of a cliche because we've been saying it so much, but we really were a close-knit community. Not just us actors, but the production crew and the stunt men. We were so passionate about making it. It was a fantastic job."

Audiences for The Lord of the Rings come in two flavours: first there are those who read The Hobbit as a child and are partial to a dose of nostalgia, special effects and movie history. For them, Middle Earth represents good, old-fashioned escapism. Then there are the Tolkien fanatics, who cut their toast with the shards of Narsil and cultivate their beards into Gandalf waterfalls. Boyd wasn't quite at that stage when he heard he'd got the part, but he's definitely a disciple now. "I did read The Hobbit when I was younger, but certainly movies of that ilk weren't really my thing. There's a certain type of fantasy movie or TV programme that I really hate - those that have little nods to the audience, little knowing nods because it's only fantasy and it's all done very tongue-in-cheek. But, to my relief, our version of Tolkien wasn't like that."

Boyd acknowledges that in the first part of the trilogy his character, Pippin, doesn't experience psychological growth. "I think Tolkien himself said that in The Fellowship Pippin isn't much more than a piece of luggage. But in The Two Towers he finds himself in a prisoner-of-war camp and seeing horrors he's never seen before. It's a coming of age for him. He actually grows up and feels he can make a difference."

Boyd pauses, and you can almost hear the thoughts amassing themselves. "I mean, there's too many important messages in Tolkien for it to just be a flippant fantasy," he begins, and quick as a flash we're into Tolkien as saviour of the world territory; how The Lord of the Rings champions embryonic environmentalism - "There are very strong messages about how we abuse nature and yet expect humanity to still be around in thousands of years' time." And how the book is a beacon of humanity in these war-mongering times - "The dwarves and elves are shown with real cultures and real languages. It's a great way to show race relations. It might sound silly to say, 'The dwarves hate the elves,' but in that world it's real. Through the fellowship, they learn to love each other. It might sound naove, but it's a lesson we could all learn."

It does sound naove, but you can't help loving him for it. Boyd's converted all right, and thinks he's as lucky as a leprechaun to have had the chance to develop the character over three movies. "I mean, actors in Star Wars and Back to the Future didn't know there would be sequels like we did. People have been reading about these characters for years, so it's a great, great honour to play them."

Boyd was born in Glasgow in 1968. His earliest footlight memory is of playing the Artful Dodger in Oliver, at primary school in Cranhill. Teachers were quick to spot his talent, and his parents duly enrolled him at the Dolphin Arts Centre. Despite a happy childhood, his adolescence was blighted with tragedy: his parents died from separate illnesses when Boyd was just 13 and 14. He resolutely won't talk about how he coped with this juggernaut of loss, but speaks warmly about his late grandmother, who cared for him and his sister Margaret. To this day, Boyd and his sister are exceptionally close.

Boyd remembers feeling bemused by the hostility that greeted his ambition to act. "In secondary school, when I told the games teacher I wanted to be an actor, he just said, 'Well don't tell anyone.' I thought that was a bit weird." Likewise, Boyd kept his activities at the Dolphin Arts Centre strictly under wraps. There were no drama productions at school. "The drama hut burnt down, so the teacher left. They didn't replace her."

Nonetheless, he continued to explore his creativity, playing guitar and bass in a band and cruising through the Glasgow music scene alongside Teenage Fanclub, the Vaselines and BMX Bandits. Yet he seems genuinely surprised when I suggest that now that he's famous he has a ready-made audience for any future music projects.

Boyd left school at 17 and enrolled at printing college, spending seven years as a book-binder in Glasgow's West End. And yes (cue spooky music), he did bind The Lord of the Rings, but "never stopped to read it". Even now, he retains habits of the trade. "I treat paperbacks appallingly, because of the way I used to read books when binding them. I used to read the left page before ripping it out and reading the right. It's a great way to read a book, because you don't have this bunch of pages on the left hand side that keeps flipping over. You've always got a brand new page."

He can't account for the acting bug during those years of broken spines and tattered pages, but his life entered a new chapter when he turned 23 and auditioned for a place at Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He then took a few months off to travel around America with his then-girlfriend. "That was the first serious amount of time I'd spent outside Scotland," he says. The couple were planning to spend a year in the United States, but Boyd received a phone call from the academy. They didn't want him to start in a year's time. They wanted him now.

"It was fantastic," says Boyd, enunciating his consonants carefully (fantastic is one of his favourite words, alongside "amazing" and "great"). "Before then, I didn't know that much about playwrights or the art of acting. I only wanted to act from seeing films such as Back to the Future and Footloose. It gave me three years to read, learn, and take from that what I wanted. I discovered my love of theatre."

And theatre certainly loved him. Ask anyone on the Scottish scene; directors, actors, backstage crew - the accolades come with wide smiles. "A sweetie," say the women. "A top lad," say the men. Boyd left RSAMD a year early, when the offers came in thick and fast, and spent years travelling the M8, treading the boards in Scotland's central-belt cities and doing the odd Highland tour. He gained a reputation as one of the 'most wanted' actors on the Scottish stage. Even now he admits to feeling wistful as old friends powder up for Christmas shows, and hints that he'll still be "getting pished at the Lyceum Christmas party".

By the time he hit his 30th birthday, life was going well. "I remember feeling a bit jittery, you know, that maybe by now I should have a car, that sort of thing. But mostly I was just feeling knackered." It was the Edinburgh Festival, and Boyd was appearing in David Harrower's award-winning Kill the Old, Torture Their Young, as well as Liz Lochhead's Britannia Rules.

Cut to a year later, and Boyd is celebrating his next birthday on a flight bound for New Zealand, having impressed The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson with his remarks about Tolkien's Scottish references. "Pippin's family is the head of the Tuck clan, which Pete insisted was pronounced in Scots, rather than English. And they are supposed to have invented golf," he boasts.

Which brings us right back to the theme of friendship, and then on to a discussion of how Boyd and his fellow hobbits became born-again surfing obsessives on the immaculate New Zealand beaches. "There's nothing like it in the world," he says. Since returning, he's had another go at it in the waters of Thurso. "It's scary up here," he admits. "Apart from being freezing, it looks scarier because the sea is so grey and the wind gives it a lot of spray, making it look stormy. Not like Mexico or Australia, where it's all blue seas and blue skies. But once you're in, it's great."

As if on cue, enter Christian to hand back the keys to Boyd's rented Edinburgh flat. Christian was a sailor extra on The Far Side of the World, and is a fellow surfing enthusiast who has come to visit his friend in order to test the temperature of the Scottish seas for himself. An Australian, he is stereotypically blonde and sun-kissed. He is also about a foot taller than Boyd. Nevertheless, the pair manage to perform that ritual of male bonding - back-clapping hugs, strong handshakes and knowing looks. You sense long nights of whisky-fuelled conversation, but they're not letting me in on anything.

Boyd settles back into the sofa, flushed from his strenuous farewell. Yup, it's friends first, career second - I certainly wouldn't want to make him choose. But I have to ask: is Elijah Wood a precious Hollywood brat or what?

His co-star does a "that pains me" face, before launching into an endearingly boyish defence.

"Oh no, not Elijah," he says incredulously. "I mean, he and the rest of the Ring lads came to stay with me when I was in Mexico. At one point there were 50 of us staying in my house. So Elijah had to sleep on the floor. He didn't bother that someone else had got a bed before him. He's a very, very cool guy. The whole movie thing just doesn't affect him," Boyd insists.

Wow. Hollywood star spends a night on the floor. Still, it's clear our Billy isn't fazed by the superstar treatment, apart from jet-setting around the world's great surf breaks. "If I was going to become a luvvie, I would have become one by now," he observes. But it's desperately sad that his parents never knew what became of their artful dodger. You can't help but ache for him.

Will he see them again? Does he believe there's more to this life than this world? "I feel that there's more, but I'm not quite sure what it is," he says hesitantly. "You only have to go surfing to think that." He pauses, smiles slightly, drawing thin lines on his pale face. "I hope I'll see them again. If you don't believe there's anything else, that's not such a bad thing because, well, you won't be there yourself. But if there is, well, that's great."

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is on release from Wednesday; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is due for release on June 6, 2003.

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