Given that Robert Sheehan is sitting across from me in the RTÉ canteen, I can only assume it's no big secret that his Love/Hate character, Darren Tracey, survived the drive-by shooting that left him in a pool of blood as the credits rolled at the end of the season one finale.

Robert Sheehan: back for more Love/Hate
Certainly, the 23-year-old is eager to discuss the return of the drama about a bunch of gun-toting Dublin gangsters. But first, he wants to visit Carrigstown.

Sheehan, like any Irish TV enthusiast, is rather excited to be on the RTÉ premises, where Fair City has its own lot at the back of the complex. "Is the set nearby?" he asks.

Explaining that it's just around the corner, I wonder why a young actor with a great CV and a tremendous future would be excited about the set of a TV soap opera.

Then I realise: this acting lark is in his blood. Sheehan caught the bug early; he was in his mid-teens when he made his film debut in Aisling Walsh's acclaimed Song for a Raggy Boy. Nowadays, he's one of the most sought-after actors of his generation, especially since he starred in E4's Misfits, a much-lauded teen drama about a group of petty criminals who gain superpowers after being hit by an electrical storm.

More recently, he's been filming in South Africa with Stephen Fry, no less, and is currently tearing up the West End stage in London. Not bad for a young lad from Portlaoise who failed his first year exams while taking a Film and TV Studies course at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.

Completely unfazed by it all, Sheehan's enjoying every minute of it. No fame-seeker, he's just doing what he wants to do. But what's all this West End stage business?

"It's Playboy of the Western World in The Old Vic", he explains. "Kevin Spacey's just been in there doing Richard III. I've met him, and he very nicely sent me a letter when we started, saying welcome and all that, and then he came in for a kind of meet and greet. I went to see the play and it was astonishing. Amazing man. He's like a one-man generator. I said to him that he was using an awful lot of energy up there on the stage, and he goes: 'Yeah, man. It's like riding a tornado every night.'"

Well, it may be tornadoes for Spacey, but it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride for Robert Sheehan, with Love/Hate just one of the many projects that have made him hot property. Right from the moment the script landed on his lap, he felt that it was going to be a success. And no, that doesn't happen as often as you might think.

"The first time I came across this I was sat in my trailer for the previous job, Misfits. I'd been sent the scripts because the guy who wrote them, Stuart Carolan, was a good mutual friend of my agent, Rose Parkinson. Basically I found myself hopping about and reading it, going '******* me! This is amazing!'The scripts were so absolutely beyond anything I've read in my entire life, Irish-wise."

Drawing comparisons with legendary HBO shows The Wire and The Sopranos, Sheehan saw Love/Hate as a great opportunity, even at that early stage in its development.

"It was all already in the script, and to align yourself or get yourself involved with a project like that is just a treat, I think, as an actor, because all you can do is either go, 'Yes' or 'No' or 'Please can I be in this?'" It all came together without any major hitches, which is rare in such circumstances.

"Yeah, it all fell into place quite quickly", Sheehan recalls. Boasting a stellar cast - as well as Sheehan and Aidan Gillen, there's Ruth Negga, Ruth Bradley and many other fine actors on board - it was probably even more unusual that the second season came together almost as seamlessly. For Sheehan, it was a case of everyone wanting to continue where they'd left off.

"I think because the first one went down so well and we all saw it and loved it, and thought this is something that we're all very proud of, so it wasn't hard to get us all back", he says, before noting: "It was hard to get us all back, actually. In fairness, they had to juggle like circus clowns to get us all together, and it was very well done. And I'm glad we got everybody back . . . There was an element of timing with a few of the actors. I think one actor, Ruth Bradley, had a short window at the beginning of the shoot, I think it was two-and-a-half weeks, to get everything done. So, of course, we concentrated on that stuff for the first few weeks."

Although he's only 23 and his CV shows an impressively upward trajectory, Robert Sheehan realises that the acting lark is a rather fickle business. But that gives him, and the generally youthful Love/Hate cast, the necessary energy to make the most of any opportunities that arise.

"I think myself and a lot of the others are at an age when we're mad to work, and very, very hungry to do stuff and just jump into lots of projects", he says. "We've energy to burn, and there's no real thought of going on holidays. Although, just before I started Love/Hate I had about a month off. It just panned out that way.

"So I just went to Thailand and Cambodia, and just travelled around with one of my mates. We just did lots of stuff, and it was beautiful. You kind of can't plan the holidays, the work plans the holidays, if you manage to get one. I'm not planning any more holidays, I'm just planning on working as much as I can over the next couple of years."

But it's not all long faces and hiding away in trailers during the course of a shoot. Grinning broadly enough to be completely convincing, Sheehan explains: "The craic is 90 on the set. Well, this one is. On most things you just strike a dynamic and have loads of fun. And there's nothing as - to quote a bigger man than myself, as Francis Ford Coppola said - there's nothing more satisfying than a project, and getting to the end of it together."

So what can we expect from Love/Hate round two? Obviously it's still a gangster drama, so it's safe to assume that we're talking more guns, drugs and duplicity. Sure it's what makes the mobster world go round.

"We start off very much in the wake of the horrible clutch of nightmares that happened previously and we see my character meets this other character, a younger guy who, in a way, you get the impression that he's been substituted for his younger brother", Sheehan notes.

Darren, you may recall, spent most of the first season seeking revenge for the murder of his brother. "I start working for this guy called Fran, and then I end up saving this young fella, Luke, from the violence of Fran and his lads, because Luke owes them money."

This act of benevolence is seen as duplicity by John Boy, Aidan Gillen's rather nasty gang boss, who accepts Darren back under his wing. "So", Sheehan notes, "basically we're back where we started on day one. Again, there's this uneasy alliance and, as we learned from the first series, it's always very chaotic and shaky between the characters and any small row or feud can end up in someone getting murdered."

When Love/Hate first appeared, sensitive members of the Irish media were appalled by what they considered to be a glamming-up of the gangster lifestyle. I joke to Sheehan that, with guns, sex, drugs and murder, what's not to like about Love/Hate's mobbed-up cast of characters, but he rises above my attempt at mischief.

"The thing is that it was a stylised TV show", he says, puzzled even now by the hostility. "It was well-researched, but at the same time it was stylised and it was television, and my take on it is, I'm not an ambassador for anything, I'm an actor. I can't speak for everyone, but the thing about television is that nobody should take it as seriously as life."

And, we both agree, "a lot of people got excited about the violence in Tom and Jerry." Similar accusations have always been a part of the reaction to gangster dramas on both the big and small screen - it at least goes back to 1931 and Jimmy Cagney throwing shapes in The Public Enemy - and, as Sheehan says: "If you're going to say that Love/Hate glamorises violence, then The Sopranos glamorises violence, Martin Scorsese glamorises violence. It's not a new complaint, and it's always going to happen. The thing I took from it was that I was delighted that it got such a reaction. It got people riled, it got people moving. That's the best reaction of all, I think."

Sheehan was also painted in some quarters as being too pretty to be a gangster. As if all gangsters were ugly; good-looking people couldn't also be sociopaths; or Susan Boyle couldn't sing like an angel because she didn't look like one. Are people that shallow?

"That was a silly argument, because you can't monopolise what a thug is, or how he looks, or what his appearance is like", says Sheehan. "It's silly. I think the argument was that we were too clean-cut to be gangsters. But again, these aren't guys who are running around the back of flats, shooting up heroin and fighting each others. These are guys who drive very, very nice cars and are bringing in serious amounts of drugs from other countries and delivering it to everyone in Ireland. They're the top of the gangster pile."

Accusations of being too good-looking can't have done his ego any harm. Smiling at the thought that he's more Pretty Boy Floyd than a member of the Plug Uglies, he admits: "That was a flattering one . . ."