"Then I was a clerical assistant for a month, but I became a Post Office clerk because that paid more and had more channels for promotion - but I hated it," he says, sitting in the Abbey Theatre.

'Glenroe' focused on the lives of the residents of a small Wiclow farming community.

See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover Liam…

Same thing when my marriage broke up, because they were really upset by that.

He'd only started drinking at 44 but was an experienced drinker by 50, and we'd be sitting in the Sackville pub and he'd be singing like Josef Locke, then he'd say to me: 'Get out of the GPO before it kills you.'

Yetour marriage was over by 1986or 1987.

"Then you'd blame yourself for wanting him to die - which you longed for, not because you want to lose him but because you want him to be taken to heaven, or whatever he believes in. Liam Carney, Actor: Braveheart.

In fact, at first - like his dad - Liam worked on the buses, as a conductor. But now the actor is making his return to TV in soap Red Rock.

"So when he died it was like a cloud lifting off her and now she says she can talk to him, when praying, and he knows who she is. "Yet I loved him very much, like I love my mother - even if I don't say it enough to her, maybe once a year - but it was so painful for her to have to sit with him, and to watch her ask: 'Do you love me still, John?'

He changed his job. Originally from Mayo, Liam was raised in Dublin and now lives in County Wexford.

I'd just decide: 'I must get jobs that pay better and when I'm not working as an actor, do other jobs to pay the bills.' "Those difficulties obviously weren't helped by the fact that after Carney got his first high-profile TV gig, in Glenroe, he had to give up his job as a bouncer in Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner of Abbey Street, because "no one would take seriously a fella from the telly!

"'Homeland' is running at the Abbey.