Through the noughties, his star continued on its ascent. He was BAFTA-nominated for his performance in Robert Sheehan, star of Love/Hate and The Umbrella Academy, has just published his first book, which is as elusive as the man himself. Donal O'Donoghue meets him.

I don’t know if I was in a position to know the plights of people from minorities [who] may not have been getting the same opportunities I was getting, which is kind of shitty. He’s 33 now and sees many of his friends settling down and getting married — “deeply irritating”, he says with a twinkle — but there is no sign of him doing that just yet. Unusually for an actor, he didn’t go to drama school. He dropped out of college in Galway, where he studied film and television. It was, he recalls, a city where there was “plenty of opportunity” to meet girls. Not that, as time went on, it was always only girls.

The results are the type of witty colourful writing that would have gotten published, even without Sheehan’s star caché. It might be easy to be cynical about an actor turning his hand to fiction — the critical mauling Sean Penn received a couple of years ago for his novel lingers in the memory — but the Portlaoise-born actor has a rare imaginative talent and has already won fulsome praise from Breakfast on Pluto author Pat McCabe no less. is the first big one) and, at 16, this precocious, musical (he played the bodhrán and tin whistle) son of a guard left home for seven months to film a television series in Canada. What did he learn? He paraphrases the actor Antony Sher: "Never allow something as trivial as your own nerves to impact the audience's enjoyment . . . And the other part of it was listening. Listening to another actor is an act of meditation and it requires brain practice. But when you do it, the walls of the theatre fall away and you are in that gorgeous flow state and if you're doing Richard III, you're having a nervous breakdown every night on stage. The reaction was like mother's milk to me, I absolutely loved it. It was scary and challenging and terrifying in all the right ways."

saw Robert take on the role of gang member Darren in the hit Irish show Love/Hate, for which he was nominated for an IFTA. Sheehan has since moved into movies, having landed roles in The Mortal Instruments and Mortal Engines. When she’s not cutting hair, she’s always raising money for charity and organising things to happen on a weekend on the green. She’d go around with far less airs and graces than she’s due.in which he co-starred with David Tennant) and, quite frankly, I was miserable. It was about things going on in my life; I felt like I couldn’t just ‘be’, and I was always creating drama around me. I was just exasperated, and so I started meditating. I thought, I’ll reserve judgment on it for six months and, after six months, I couldn’t have been more grateful I did it.” It’s easier to meet someone when you’re famous but harder to conduct a relationship with someone. There is someone (significant) now and it’s been an interesting learning challenge for me; a confrontation with the self and noticing old patterns emerge and then watching them dissolve. At ground level, relationships have become easier for me because I know that what I’m fighting with is myself. Suddenly you’re five years old and you’re having the same feelings you had when your mother told you to go to bed early and, all of a sudden, you’re playing the role of your five-year-old self, and your girlfriend is your mother, and you might punch a wall because you’re an adult. And so, all this stuff, I’ve really improved upon.” The promotion of the book promised humour, which I failed to see. Instead it's filled with constant dark, morbid thoughts - something I enjoy reading, so I'm not complaining. Robert Sheehan is known to many as criminal gang member Darren in the Irish drama series Love/Hate but has since shot to international fame.

He sighs, setting his green eyes on me. "You do know I'm going to get in so much trouble for telling you this." And then they’re hoisting me up by the scruff and they look alarmed. There must be a load of blood. Their eyes are bulging and their talk is drifting in and out of my ears. I can’t hear properly. God forgive me, I don’t want to die, but on the upside … If you die in a churchyard, you’re guaranteed entry into Heaven, I’d say. Is that right, God? It’s not written down anywhere but why else would all the priests and Protestant vicars bury themselves on the church grounds? It’s hallowed, sacred ground, and I think that means I’d get a pass. Should the first film take off in the way that's planned, the move to Hollywood is almost inevitable; his co-stars, Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, are already there. This year he has been over twice so far. "And it's friendlier than you think," he says. "It's all: 'Chad's having a party on Saturday, Ethan's having a barbecue on Sunday, we're gonna do brunch and hiking on Monday…' It's surprisingly easy to plug yourself in." Some of the stories are actually really well written, and makes us ponder about the absurdity of human life and behaviour. But some of those stories are so incomprehensible. Robert Sheehan grew up in Portlaoise, one of four children of Joe and Maria Sheehan. Disappearing Act, which comes with a warning (Contains Adult Material) is dedicated to his father, who instilled his son with a love of literature and the arts. Both parents were supportive of Robert, who used to play the tin whistle and bodhrán in his days performing at the Fleadh Cheoils. "I don’t really play any more," he says (although he was 'hammering’ a bodhrán recently for his music-mad landlord).

You know, I was only thinking earlier on that as you get older the outside world shrinks and shrinks. And things right in front of you get kind of big. He started meditating a few years ago, when he was at an unhappy period in his life. “I was around 30 and I was doing a film called In case you’re wondering what it’s like inside Robert Sheehan’s head, the cover of the actor’s debut book, Disappearing Act, has a stab at showing us. We get the author’s face, rising out of twin peaks, bunches of grapes dangling earring-like from his ears and the top of his head exploding with imagery: a giant moth, a red rose, two horns of fire. So I was gone (from home) even before I left home properly. It was tough because I was quite lonely, but sometimes I think that suffering at that hour of my life made me robust.”

However, I feel the reason why these stories work better than the others in this collection is because they stray the most from Sheehan's original conceit. Medusa does not offer much of Sheehan's ventriloquism and Gertie Cronin is purported to be a straight transcript of a tale told by the author's father. Klaus is queer. Sheehan is straight but he has, in his own words, “had a few tries, a few goes. It just wasn’t for me . . . [On camera], it was slightly daunting kissing a man with love . . . But it’s just a lady with a beard . . . Love is love really. You can choose to emphasise the gayness of the love, or the love itself. It rang nicely with people because it placed no emphasis on the fact that it was a man with a man. [The characters in Umbrella Academy] are flawed but they’re certainly not prejudiced in any kind of way. They live in a world where if you can get a bit of love [you] cling to it because it’s like gold dust.” Robert Sheehan, Portlaoise born star of The Umbrella Academy, Love/Hate, Misfits, Red Riding, The Mortal Instruments and Mortal Engines, is lounging on a couch in his north London flat and I'm staring at him through the camera on his laptop. He's very relaxed. "I'm loving this, man, being able to get cups of tea, slices of toast, being able to go and water the plants." Actually, there's a big potted plant incongruously sitting beside him on the couch. His hair is long. "I'm a happy bunny, man." Where it correlates for me is in researching a character,” he says. “Even last night there was a film that hopefully we’re going to try and pull together for f**k-all money before the end of the year. And I had a long chat with the director on the phone last night and I found myself for a good two, three hours being [the character] in my living room and looking at all the objects and working out what they would feel about all this stuff. You start to learn things when you take a character and bump them up against things in the external world. And that’s what the writing is.” The results are the type of witty colourful writing that would have gotten published, even without Sheehan’s star caché. It might be easy to be cynical about an actor turning his hand to fiction — the critical mauling Sean Penn received a couple of years ago for his novel lingers in the memory — but the Portlaoise-born actor has a rare imaginative talent and has already won fulsome praise from

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Acting is a personal thing. It’s not someone telling you how to act the same way as everyone else': Robert Sheehan. Photograph: Jason Hetherington/Observer With a number of nominations under his belt, Robert Sheehan has made a name for himself as one of the hottest stars from Ireland today. Where is Robert Sheehan from? with Nicolas Cage, and I thought now I can make a career out of this.” He also credits the influence of his agent, Rose Parkinson, with whom he enjoyed “incredible camaraderie”.