SHE is so familiar, it's easy to forget 15 years have passed since she was a regular face and voice on RTE. Trim and trendy in a leather suit, she seems more poised, more stylish - but certainly no older. She'll be back on our TV screens next month, presenting Leading Hollywood, a series of interviews with six Irish actors - Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Aidan Quinn, Patrick Bergin and Stephen Rea - who have become "leading men" in Hollywood.

The interviews - though cut down for the TV series - took couple of hours apiece, and are reproduced in more depth in a book of the series.

Each of the six Irish actors comes across as reassuringly insecure and soul searching rather than full of the vain glory that we assume afflicts all Hollywood stars. Aidan Quinn says: "Sometimes I'm very confident, and on the other hand I'm grossly insecure - I can't believe I'm getting away with it. I can't believe they're not going to find me out at any moment and it's all going to be pulled away.

Loyally, Aine backs up this impression: "They are not defensive or egotistical. They all have something to prove and nothing to lose. They are intense and dedicated - you can see why they tend to get cast as priests and gunmen - and they have enough steely grit to make it in one of the most savage industries in the world."

A determining factor in their success, she believes, is that they appeal to women as "romantic and sensitive types", but are macho enough for men to want to identify with them too. She pays special tribute to Gabriel Byrne, her one time romantic partner and now professional colleague (she is the director of his short Irish language drama, Draiocht, to be screened on T na G later this month), as the Irish actor who paved the way: "He was the first to break through internationally, and then he came home and got involved in making small films in Ireland, like The Courier, which wouldn't have got made if they hadn't had his name attached."

She finds it "an incredible phenomenon" that six actors, from a country other than America, have all achieved this stature at roughly the same time, and hopes that Irish women will also begin to get leading roles (as opposed to character parts): "I'd love to make a similar series about Irish women, with me included, of course!"

This laughing reference to her own career brings us back to Aine herself, who left RTE back in the early 1980s to try and make it as an actor in England: "I was horrorstruck to discover that RTE was planning to groom me as their `Gloria Hunniford'. I'd been interested in acting all along, but I found I couldn't get stage work in Ireland because everyone associated me with RTE."

She went to work with the London Irish Theatre Company and also did parts with the BBC: one of her favourites was opposite Robbie Coltrane in the black comedy Bogey Man: "And for anyone who wants to know, yes, it was very nice being kissed by Robbie Coltrane. He's gorgeous, like a big bear."

In 1990 she produced Sidewind by Ray Brennan, a play about the Birmingham Six and their wives and families, performed in the Battersea Arts Centre. Although "an unpopular subject at the time", the play received "rave reviews": "Suddenly British media people were writing about the Birmingham Six case in the features pages of the national newspapers, saying, `this is an outrage'. It was the first crack in the edifice." She says that Gabriel Byrne first got the idea of making In the Name of the Father when he came to the opening night.

She mentions Byrne's name frequently, never missing a chance to note his innovations and achievements (of his writing Draiocht, she is quick to stress that he has a degree in Irish). She is still annoyed with the media attention (and distortion) which their break cup received and, understandably, does not want to have to go into the whole thing all over again. "People don't seem to be able to understand that we were involved romantically, and now the relationship is ongoing in a different but positive way.

She is now with actor David Duffy (who is currently appearing in Fair City). In 1990 she gave birth to their son, Gavan. She had a water birth in a hospital in London, an experience which she recommends highly: "I had no medical intervention: no painkillers or stitches. I was so full of adrenalin for 48 hours after the birth I could have run a marathon.

She is also an advocate of breastfeeding, Irish people are too inhibited about breast feeding, but research has shown that breast milk helps the development of the baby's brain. I have fed Gavan anywhere, from the Dorchester Hotel to the Tube. I still give him comfort feeds."

She and David have moved back to Ireland: "It is an exciting place to be right now: we're blossoming. Dublin has the kind of buzz that Paris probably had in the 1930s. I believe that if Joyce were alive now, he wouldn't be living in Paris, he'd be back in Dublin."

She is not so enthralled with the lack of childcare facilities here: "Children of working parents need stimulation and play with other children after school ends at 3.30 p.m. The State should provide for this."

Aine O'Connor prefers not to say her age. She is also careful to keep many things off the record. She sketches in a few details, such as her origins in Waterford, and the fact that at the age of 18 she accompanied her mother to California. She studied film, drama and art at the University of California at Long Beach. Her mother (who has only recently returned to Ireland) taught drama to Mexican students.

AFTER a stint in San Francisco as a reporter with the Irish Herald, Aine was homesick for Ireland. She worked as a teacher of drama and art at Ballyfermot tech before starting with RTE. Her time in Ballyfermot was frustrating: "Although it was a very progressive school, a lot of the young people there were lost. Parents often couldn't afford to keep their children in school beyond the age of 13. I saw talented boys who were forced to go and work on the building sites."

Of the subjects of Leading Hollywood, she says: "Young Irish men need practical heroes like these: successful actors who come from disadvantaged backgrounds."

Patrick Bergin's father, a Labour senator in the 1950s, certainly had an inspirational family motto: "Is Gael mise, agus is mise as Gael, ni thigim go naire dom e, nil chasaigh mo ghroim ar aon fear sa tsaol, ach nil aon fear go tinte, nios fear liom e (I'm a Gael, I am descended from a Gael, I know no shame in that, I wouldn't turn my back on any man in the world but there is no ordinary man any better than me)."

Aine observes that these six Hollywood actors are accomplished in more than one area: Gabriel Byrne is a writer, Stephen Rea founded the Field Day Theatre Company with Brian Friel, and Liam Neeson was an amateur boxer. Pierce Brosnan is an artist: he took up painting to relieve the tension of staying by his wife Cassie's bedside when she was dying of ovarian cancer and he recalls: "I remember once, about three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, my head was just turning with fear she was beside me, she was getting over chemotherapy, and I was just really angry with the whole thing. And I went downstairs and got the paints out, and I thought, I'll paint, I'll put dawn all this garbage that's in my head'."

Aine is animated on the subject of Draiocht, her directorial debut. Set in the 1960s. It is designed to revise the usual drab image of rural Irish women. "I remember women wearing sophisticated fashionable clothes. I'm from outside the tale, so I should know she asserts. "In the 1960s they had bouffant hairstyles and pink lipstick; they bought Vogite patterns and made their clothes." Somewhat poignantly, she admits that she herself an only child, was never "let" have a bouffant hairstyle.

"Irish characters are always being stereotyped in films," she says. The women wear clips in their hair and look like they are on day release from some institution. Like the black Americans before Spike Lee made She's Gotta Have It, our films about ourselves have been informed by the prejudices of others. I feel I'm striking a blow, putting the main actress in Draiocht in a sexy dress and make up; portraying an Irish mother who is not downtrodden, but is erotic and progressive. You wouldn't think this sounds radical but it is rarely seen in films about Irish people.

As illustrated by the subjects of Leading Hollywood, Aine O'Connor is clearly determined to ensure that the word Irish" and the words "glamorous and successful" need no longer be seen as mutually exclusive, either on the world stage, or in our perception of ourselves.