I'm happy - I got to do everything

"I remember getting a clatter from an aunt of mine. I must have been about 10. 'That's all you're good for,' she said, 'looking in the mirror and thinking about gir-els'."

Gabriel Byrne gives a wry smile. The irony of his aunt's words is not wasted on him. The Drimnagh boy had bid dreams.

"I remember when we were in our late teens, the young guys talked with great excitement about getting married. To tell you the truth, I was never that excited about the prospect of settling down at 20 and having a kid at 22. I wanted to do other things."

And do other things, he did. He trained to be a priest for four years. He taught in a secondary school. And he took to the stage. It was that which changed his life.

Gabriel Byrne is now a Hollywood star. He does studio pictures, has his own film production company - Plurabelle films - and basically, he is free to do what he likes.

"I've done everything that I wanted to do since I was 11 years old. And I don't mean that in a tired, dismissive way. I got to work with the guys that I adored. I was actually in scenes with actors that I was in love with. I got to fly on the Concorde. I got to go out with beautiful women. I got to do everything."

At the end of all this, the 40-year-old actor tells me that he is happy. As he sits opposite me on a sunny Monday morning in the Merrion Hotel, Gabriel Byrne is serenity itself. "I'm very comfortable at this age," he says.

Byrne has a ruggedly handsome face. His eyes are an extraordinary petrol blue colour—and kind.

The Galway Film Fleadh is holding a special tribute to the actor." I feel like I'm dead," he says. " I saw a thing in the paper the other day and it said 'tribute'. And I thought, God maybe this is what death is like. It was bizarre, but I'm really thrilled.

"And to think I could be sitting out in Coolock now hearing confessions. Perish the thought!"

Having packed in the teaching job, Gabriel Byrne began his thespian life on the dole. He acted in the Focus Theatre with the great Deirdre O'Connell. A role in the RTE soap The Riordans, led to the birth of Bracken. Things started to happen. In the eighties, Gabriel left Dublin for London.

"When I left, it was just a case of 'I'm off to London to do a play.' I didn't know it was the last time."

But Dublin will always be precious to him. "Dublin will always be my home. Always in my head."

Since 1994, Gabriel has lived in Los Angeles. And rather refreshingly, Byrne speaks highly of the City of Angels. "There's a great cultural heart in it which most people don't know. There's great theatre there. It's full of writers, painters and sculptors. When you're confronted with the excesses of the modern world in a really obvious way as you are in LA, the soul needs more."

And then there are the stars. When Gabriel lived in Beverly Hills, Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson were his neighbors.

As Gabriel talks, he peppers his conversation with stars' names - James Stewart, Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, Anthony Hopkins, and Mickey Rourke.

What was Anthony Hopkins really like? "An inspiring, gorgeous man."

I wasn't all that curious about Mickey Rourke but one line that Gabriel uttered that changed all that. "Mickey Rourke showed me his liposuction scar 10 years ago." His what? "His liposuction scar." Right.

Steven Spielberg once told Gabriel that what he liked about him was that his career was always beyond classification. "One minute you're in a studio picture," Spielberg observed, "and then I see you in a picture in Ireland, or some small film in Czechoslovakia." Gabriel likes it that way.

"All my choices have been movies that I've wanted to do. The thing about it is, if you're a star of a movie and it makes $150m, that's it. You're not gonna get a chance to be anything else but that guy in that movie again.

"That's why Nicolas Cage has painted himself into a corner as an action hero. It's why Steve McQueen was on the motorbike, they didn't want him to play Ibsen, which he did."

On the subject of Hollywood, Byrne couldn't have sounded less enamoured if he tried. "Hollywood is not interested in making meaningful social movies that change the way people think. They don't care about any of that. To them, the movie is a hamburger. They put in out there, they sell it. It's that much of a business. I'm not trashing Hollywood - that's just the reality."

Byrne is leaving in LA, but not because he's tired of it. "I'm moving back to New York because my wife, my ex-wife, is getting remarried. She going to live in New York and I want to be near my kids."

Gabriel's marriage to actress Ellen Barkin lasted for six years. "We got married in Las Vegas at a place called The Wee Kirk O'The Heather at 3:00 in the morning, which was a laugh."

As Gabriel was coming down the aisle, the organist played "Tulips from Amsterdam'. He thought Gabriel had said that he was from Holland, not Ireland. Then he changed his tune: 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling'. 

But the marriage ended. I wanted to know why.

"Marriages end." Gabriel says philosophically. "It wasn't because either of us were unfaithful or there was any violence or abuse. It wasn't any of those reasons. It was because I think we just changed. I'm really grateful for the time we had together because we had two beautiful children together - Jack and Romy. I think that's the reason why we came together.

"I love her now in a way that's very deep for me and very profound. I'm glad she's found happiness, that she's met somebody she's in love with and that will make her happy. I hope to go to the wedding in September or October."

Last year Gabriel's first love, producer Aine O'Connor, died.

Do you miss her terribly? I read that you used to talk to each other every day.

"We were just the best of friends. It was as simple as that. It's a huge, huge loss. And I know it sounds corny, but I do talk to her all the time. It's one of the reasons I find it difficult coming back to Dublin and to London, it because she's everywhere."

Walking by 93 Stephen's Green mustn't be easy for Gabriel - because of a benign act of vandalism of Aine's.

One night as a pair of them were walking by, Gabriel said that he used to work there - The Banker's Club - and hated it. "I was basically a servant there." All those years later, even the number irritated him. Aine went up the steps and pried the original 3 off the door. "I still have that 3 on my desk," Gabriel says.

Their first meeting was the sort that you'd see in film. She met him at a party after a play. She was with someone else. But she soon dumped him. Daring him to knock back two treble gins, he date fell for her trick. Ten minutes later, he was asleep. Her words to Gabriel were the beginning of their romance - "Let's go."

Then Gabriel stops talking about Aine. He is obviously sensitive to the fact that Aine spent the last years of her life with David Duffy and they had a son.

"I was lucky to have met Aine. Just like I was really lucky to have met Ellen."

"Is there anyone now?" I pry. Byrne laughs at my bad timing, but still answers.

"I went through a phase after I separated. I though, "I've been with two women, two women basically for 22 years and I'm really glad that I did. Now I'm gonna do the things that I'm gonna do as a single man.' I went through about four or five years of that. I dated all the people that one would want to date. You'd look at a picture and say, 'God, yeah.'

"I don't want to be in a relationship for the sake of being in a relationship. I suppose you could say, I'm saving myself for the right woman," he said with a self-mocking glint in his eyes.''

So what's next?

He wouldn't mind treading the boards again. But he wouldn't follow the Hollywood trend and head for London's tiny Almeida theatre. He'd do it on Broadway. And as for film? His next one, which he will produce himself, is called The Lying Lord. It stars Liz Hurley.

"I met her in a nightclub in LA a year and a half ago. The music was loud and I was shouting across at her 'I think I might have a script for you.'

"She left a message on my machine the other day. 'Gabriel, I'm frightfully excited about doing the film' She sounded very sexy."

Gabriel's aunt was right on one count. He's still thinking about the gir-els.