''For me now, being almost 40, having two kids, my value system is all about showing my son and my wife and now my baby what a responsible man is supposed to be like,'' he says. ''I don't know if I'd be the same if I didn't have kids and

I wasn't happily married and thankful for what I have now. It depends where you are in life.''

Green's new alter ego, wedding-band lead singer Tommy, is an echo of what his life might have been had he not settled down: single and partying hard. Tommy's friendship with his four bandmates - married father of two Eddie (Peter Cambor), Eddie's brother Barry (Derek Miller) and newcomer Stevie (Harold Perrineau) - is the focus of the new US sitcom Wedding Band.

''I don't know if lost is the right word, he's just not ready,'' Green says of his character. ''He's not ready to give up the young feelings, he's not ready to give up on the life that is free and easygoing.''

Created by Darin Moiselle and Josh Lobis, Wedding Band is part classic sitcom, part male Sex and the City. It's about the sometimes complicated friendship between four men who are at very different stages of their lives. Green admits men do not easily talk about their friendships with other men and he loves that Wedding Band taps into that unease. ''Men, for the most part, express their feelings in a much different way than women do,'' he says. ''I'm lucky enough to have two best friends who are as outgoing emotionally as I am, so we will sit and have in-depth conversations about things.''

Tommy, he says, is trapped inside a snapshot of his own youth. ''His way of dealing with things is very much that of a 17-year-old, a guy who just got out of high school. He will drink whether it hurts him or not, he doesn't care about the repercussions of things, he just sort of lives life and takes it day to day.''

For men, Green says, role models have changed dramatically in the past few decades. ''It's a different time now, we live in a society where media seem to take pride in tearing people down. Honestly, I preferred Mel Gibson when

I just got to see him in movies. I loved the passion he put into what he did, I don't want to know him so personally.''

Green has dabbled in music himself - in 1996 he released the album One Stop Carnival - and says he enjoys recording and performing music for the series. ''I grew up in music, and I love it, but

I am singing as a character, so

I get to sing the way Tommy would sing it if he was on stage at a wedding,'' he says. ''That's a certain frame of mind, it's not the same frame of mind you would have going in to record an album. It's a different experience that way.''

Wedding Band
Ten, Wednesday, 7.30pm