I CAUGHT up with Deirdre O'Kane, Eanna MacLiam and Anto Nolan, lounging around after rehearsals for the Abbey's Juno And The Paycock. Mates of old from "the Republic of Drimnagh", MacLiam and Nolan started acting in their teens in the crucible of Dublin Youth Theatre, before coming of age through a slew of Passion Machine shows - inspired less by the Abbey greats than by the shape-throwing of Starsky 'n' Hutch.

With his weasel frame and blazing eyes MacLiam ended up serving seven years in Fair City. Last year he cut loose into the freelance piranha pond. "With a family of four kids to support, it was good for me to stay in RTE.

Surely that's a big step-down in income, even if he has been in constant employment since "Sure, you get a load more for television, but I couldn't really pick up on other film and theatre work."

So how does he adjust to the hussle? "There's not a lot you can do to look for a job, you just put your face around, and anyone will concede there's a lot of luck involved. I didn't intend to go into this business at all - it just fell nicely for me."

"You lucky git - I struggled for years," says Drogheda-born Deirdre O'Kane. After being selected for the first course of the Gaiety School of Acting, she went straight to a one-line walk-on in Borstal Boy.

"There was an awful dearth for five years. I never believed the work would dry up completely - don't ask me where you get that blind faith. I remember one patch from January to July in 1991. I auditioned for five jobs and was down to the last two for every single one of them. Eventually, I was completely paranoid."

But she took the initiative and wrote a two-hander play with actress Marianne Fahy, which was taken on by Maeliosa Stafford as a Druid lunchtime production which led to landing her part in Vincent Woods's award-winning At The Black Pig's Dyke in 1992 - and she has worked pretty consistently since.

More recently again, her stand-up comedy act has proved "ridiculously" successful. "After putting in nine years of acting, you begin to feel it's all pure fluke."

Anto Nolan followed a similar, if choppier, path. After a few lean years, he defected to the US: he didn't quite Nureyev across the barricades at JFK, he just didn't join the rest of the cast on the trip home, coincidentally, from another production of Juno (Joe Dowling's).

After getting back, he wrote and directed Too Much Too Young, a ska- riddled black comedy for Passion Machine. "I suppose it came out of sitting in a bedsit on the North Circular Road, looking out the window.

"As Lassie said to Walt Disney, 'what I really want is to direct'

Certainly, writing can mop up an actor's spare time. At any one time, there's only so many jobs in the main houses, and despite the much-vaunted boom in film and TV, most films come with the best parts already cast - as Nolan says "leaving everyone here to jockey for two-liners, or standing in the background with a cap on. That's not sour grapes, it's a reality."

"Absolutely," agrees O'Kane: "but there's still a hell of a lot more parts for men than for women - I mean between the Bravehearts and the Michael Collinses, I thought I'd slit me wrists."

She finds the same gender imbalance in theatre. "The women characters are often foils to the males anyway. It boils down to the fact that there aren't enough women writing.

"I've never been in a play written by a woman - ever," muses MacLiam. "And I think if I was to write something, I'd be afraid to write female parts." Nolan here looks a little sheepish, having just finished a new play about seven male upholsterers.

All are in agreement that "nobody gets into this business to make money". "You hold onto the possibility that someday you could land a lucrative film role," says O'Kane. "In the meantime, a jobbing actor has to rely on the odd windfalls of advertisements or voice-overs, in between wage- paying jobs. The Abbey, as the most heavily subsidised theatre in town, pays more than other theatres or independent companies. There are different set payment brackets, but an actor, often through an agent, bargains for their own deal.

"An agent takes the messiness out of it, but I must say I haven't landed a job through an agent yet."

In general, agents take around 10 per cent of gross income plus 21 per cent VAT. Then comes tax, PRSI and other contributions; and if an actor is registered as self-employed, he or she is taxed on whatever social welfare he or she claims. Essentially, each job has to tide actors over the resting period.

The freelance nature of the work means that it can be very difficult to secure credit cards, loans, mortgages or, as Nolan points out, even rent a TV. Director Ben Barnes, earwigging on all this, adds: "Another aspect which is grossly unfair is the cost of an actor's motor insurance. In my experience, actors are very reliable, responsible people, so it's penalising people by virtue of their profession, which I think might even be unconstitutional.

"It's very remiss of Equity (the actors' union) not to run seminars for actors to show them what they can do about pensions or mortgages."

The very mention of Equity - "the toothless lion" as Nolan dubs it - is enough to get them all going.

After two years on the Executive Committee ("like banging me head off a brick wall"), MacLiam claims that "as far as SIPTU is concerned, Equity is a joke. For instance, the strike in RTE four years ago, Equity had to be dragged out kicking and screaming. In the end, to be fair, they did their bit - but if the dispute had started with actors as opposed to camera crews, would any of the other unions have come out? I don't think so."

O'KANE, who put in a year on the Actors Council, is similarly disillusioned. Nolan remarks: "I'm a member of the Screen Actors' Guild in the States, and they do protect their members. If you're a guild member, you get priority in auditions. But here, if you go out to Irishtown for an ad, there's loads of people on their lunch-hour from banks and offices."

So what keeps you hanging on? O'Kane says: "It can be tough, yeah, but when it's working for you, the life of an actor is the best in the world."