He's The Man. That's how Gabriel Byrne's character is named in the credits of End of Days, an action blockbuster which draws on the ultimate battle between good and evil as it zeroes into the theme of millennial angst. The movie is set almost entirely over the three days in the run-up to the last night of 1999, as the forces of good are embodied in a flawed, run-down ex-cop played by Arnold Schwarzenegger - and evil is represented by no less than Satan, who takes the human form of an investment banker played by Byrne.
The Irish actor wisely eschews histrionics and he plays Satan with the swaggering insouciance and head-on determination of somebody utterly convinced of his supremacy. "If you have huge special effects behind you, you don't really need to do that much - I just wanted him to be a guy who was accessible, somewhat charming and really enjoyed his work," Byrne says as he sips water in the bar of a Central Park hotel on a November afternoon in New York.
"The problem with playing Satan is that everyone has an image of what Satan should be like - usually derived from other actors' portrayals of the devil. Somebody asked me if I believed in Satan, and it's really another way of asking whether I believe in evil. Yes, I do believe in evil, because if you believe in good you must believe in evil. "What interests me about the notion of Satan is that evil exists usually in a harmless and unremarkable form. It doesn't announce itself in an obvious way. It's too late before it takes complete control, and the root of evil is seduction. And almost all movies come down to a battle between good and evil."
Ironically, immediately before playing Satan, Byrne was cast as a Vatican priest in Stigmata, which opens here next month. "That's more of a coincidence than anything else," he says. "There's a lot of millennium paranoia at the moment and, I suppose, Hollywood always reflects what's going on in the real world to some extent.
"Look at some of the movies which have been successful this year, like The Sixth Sense - and even Stigmata, which nobody expected to make a dime and actually turned out to do very well. I don't know, but without being too heavy about it, people have a need to see these kinds of movies because they provide some kind of catharsis for the insecurity they feel coming up to the year 2000.
"One thing about Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he's extremely canny in the sense that he instinctively, innately knows about the public pulse." (Byrne does a very sharp and funny impersonation of Schwarzenegger.) "I think he's a brilliant marketer, not least of his own self. When you think of the phenomenon of turning yourself from an Austrian weight-lifter with an unpronouncable name into the biggest movie star in the world, it's something that can't be dismissed. He marketed himself in such a clever way, and continues to do it.
"This film is a more emotional role for him, in that he has to fight inner demons rather than demons with Uzis and explosives. And I can sense a shift in him away from the action hero, especially when he delivers the movie's message, that you can't fight violence with guns. For all those people who believe that violence in society is the result of violent movies, it's a significant moment."
Released in the US last weekend, End of Days will have its Irish premiere in Dublin next Monday night. Gabriel Byrne will introduce the screening and he has requested that the proceeds go to the Aine O'Connor Foundation, set up in memory of the bright, radiant producer with whom he had a long involvement and who died young early last year.
The foundation's mission is to highlight women's cancer and to direct money into cancer research. It also aims to raise awareness among young women of the growing number of cancer causes. "It's a way of commemorating Aine's name and keeping it alive, and doing some good at the same time," says Byrne, who also decided that the guests at the premiere would not be charged, but would be invited to make a donation to the foundation.
He and Aine O'Connor remained very close friends after their personal relationship ended, and he also remains on very good terms with his ex-wife, Ellen Barkin, the mother of his two children, Jack, who is now 10, and Romy, who's seven,
"I've always worked hard towards that," he says, "because to me, if you've been intimate with somebody emotionally, I think you form a bond with that person. And when you have kids you're connected even more closely. Ellen is the mother of my kids and I'm their father, so we're always going to be connected and it makes absolute sense that we should be as respectful and friendly as we possibly can. But we're actually very good friends. I enjoy that friendship and I value it very highly."
He has a house in Dublin and another in Los Angeles, and now has an apartment in New York. "I live there most of the time. My kids live in New York now that Ellen's getting married again." To an extremely wealthy man, I believe? "Extremely wealthy would be an understatement. He owns Revlon. He's probably one of the richest guys in America. His name is Ron Perlman and when I heard it first I thought she was going out with the actor, Ron Perlman, who was in Quest For Fire and The City of Lost Children. All I can say is I wish them every happiness. I've met him. I was over there for dinner the other night and he seems like a nice man and seems to treat her very well."
Is Byrne himself now involved with somebody else? "Am I?," he laughs. "No, I wouldn't say so. I'm kind of a more sophisticated version of the fellow who goes down to the pub every night and has his few pints and then goes to the dance. No, I enjoy my freedom and I've a great many friends. "Being a single man has its advantages, you know."
I mention that Peter Hyams, the director of End of Days, recalled how, when Byrne came in to discuss the project originally, "all the women in the office were swooning like bowling pins" - rather like the woman Byrne's character kisses passionately in the film just after his spirit is overtaken by Satan. Or the way the group of women from Dallas sitting near us in the Central Park bar have made him the centre of their attention.
"Yeah, it's nice of Peter to see that," says Byrne self-effacingly. "But, you know, the older you get the sweeter those compliments sound! I feel that I am ageing in as graceful a way as one possibly can for the life that I've given myself."
He looks remarkably well for someone who can't be too far off 50, if I've done my sums correctly. "That's still a bit away, not too far," he shrugs. "It does concentrate your mind when you see it looming before you. But then people said 40 was a big deal and that passed away. "Strangely enough, I've been happier in later years than I have been for a long time. So I don't dread it at all. I really truly hate the idea of fighting against age. I don't think that's a healthy thing at all."
He gets back to Ireland three or four times a year. "Usually quietly," he says. "I have a house in Dublin, which was a big commitment for me to make. But I've never really been away. I've always been coming back and forward. I bring the kids back every summer."
Being away so much has made him acutely aware of, and interested in, the changes through which Ireland has gone. "It's hard to believe now," he says. "When I left there in 1983 it was a pretty depressing time to be in Ireland. Everyone was leaving. Now the trend is reversed. The whole country has changed so much, and most of it is for the better.
"It's a lot more open now. People are more willing to face up to things that were buried. But there seems to be an ever-widening gap between the people who are getting richer and richer and at the same time things haven't changed at all for a whole lot of people.
"I feel like an outsider when I go back, to tell you the truth. I don't feel I belong in Ireland anymore, and yet I so much belong in another way. I feel I belong now in New York or Los Angeles as much as I do in Dublin. I still consider myself to be 100 per cent Irish and I don't believe I've changed all that much. A little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more accepting of myself and the world around me."
Asked to select the highlights of his career as he nears the end of his second decade as a movie actor, he reflects for a while. "When I set out to be an actor in Dublin, the idea at that time of going into movies was unthinkable," he says. "I thought the Abbey and RTE would be the summit of my working life. I went into pictures at a time when not many Irish actors were working in pictures.
"If you look at someone like Robert Mitchum's career and you look at the 115 films he made, there are probably 10 great movies in there. It's very difficult to consistently make very good movies. Nobody does. These days there are maybe eight good scripts a year - if it's a good year. I don't really know what the future of movies is, nor what the future of actors in movies is, because it's becoming more and more formulaic with each passing year.
"And the system is so heavily star-orientated now that there's maybe eight or 10 big box-office stars in the world and they're going to get those eight or 10 scripts that are really the best. It's a difficult time to be an actor. Yet you have to live and you have to work and you have to choose as carefully as you can, and in order to continue to make independent movies you have to make commercial movies."
Being rated an A-list actor in America imposes its own limitations almost instantly, he believes. "The pressure is enormous and you're expected to keep making hits and if you fail to do that you gradually begin to fall out of favour. I've never had a huge box-office success and in a way that has kind of denied me access to the Alist. But I've always tried to do pictures that I thought had something interesting to say.
"As a European actor they don't know quite what to do with you in America - even great actors like Gary Oldman or Tim Roth, they put them in as villains, or else they do independent pictures. And even if you look at American actors who began in incredibly promising movies - say, Nicolas Cage, who's now making commercial movies one after another, I think he did his most interesting work when he was working his way up.
"As an actor you've so little control over your own performance. You can be badly lit. You can be badly edited. The public doesn't go to the cinema and say `that was badly edited', but I can go and know if it has been extremely badly edited. I know because I was there.
"It's very rare that you get an opportunity to work with brilliant directors like the Coen brothers or Bryan Singer, and there aren't very many great directors around. But I've also worked with Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, John Boorman, Costa-Gavras - really interesting directors. So I suppose the highlights would have to be Miller's Crossing, The Usual Suspects, Defence of the Realm, Into the West, and I liked what I did in Man in the Iron Mask. It's all about constantly striving."
Byrne is now planning to take a break from movies and return to his roots in theatre. In March he opens in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For the Misbegotten on Broadway. "I read that play and I was so moved by it," he says. "The writing in it is incredible. It's a heartbreaking play. I've wanted to do a play for a very long time. I think it's time I had a break and went back to doing theatre again. It's very exciting to be doing it again. I'm looking forward to it, though with a certain amount of trepidation."
Having displayed a natural flair as a writer with his autobiographical book, Pictures in My Head, he would like to write more. "I find writing very therapeutic," he says. "And I love radio which is where that book all began. I'd love to write more for radio. I was brought up on radio, as a lot of people of my generation were, listening to the Radio Eireann Players and all those fantastic actors they had there. There's something wonderful about just a microphone and an empty room. I'd love to do more of that."
And having been involved as a producer on five films to date, he is seriously contemplating directing his first feature film. "I really think that's what I'm going to end up doing," he says. "I've been saying that for quite a long time. Making a feature is such a commitment - at least 18 months of your life - so you have to be passionate about it, and I don't have that passion for any project just yet."
As he leaves the bar, the women from Dallas beam broadly and says hello. Gabriel Byrne smiles back, passes the time of day and goes off to see his children.
End of Days opens in Ireland next Friday