'Well, where did you go?" I ask Irish actress Flora Montgomery. Her blue eyes widen in confusion. I was simply picking up from where we left off.

We last met seven years ago, when she was starring in the film When Brendan Met Trudy. She burst into Claridges Hotel in London and during our time together, she fizzed with passion. She was in love with acting and life and when we were parting, she left me with a cliffhanger. Her boyfriend, who designed outside heaters, had left a note on her pillow -- "Wax, pack, bring a bikini, your passport and be at Heathrow airport on Friday at four." We swooned at the grand romantic gesture and delighted in the practicality of his words. (The warning to wax and the bikini hint was enough to let her know how to pack.) It may have been a mystery tour, but she was certainly heading for some sunny clime.

So where did she go?

She blushes beautifully as I remind her of this.

"We went around Southern India on a 1975 Enfield motorbike with a hammock and a rucksack. It was the most beautiful thing that I've ever done. It was amazing."

Is she still with him?

"No. He's now married and lives in Hong Kong," she says, then laughs.

She is still reeling from my memory and mortified at the way she had blurted it out.

It is a gloriously sunny Monday morning and Flora sits in the Clarence Hotel, tucking into her third breakfast of the day -- croissants and coffee. It is only ten o'clock but she has flown over from London, so has been up since five. But she's as freshfaced as if she had eight hours sleep. Getting up at five was easy for her, she tells me. She used to get up a hell of a lot earlier.

Last year, when she was in Dublin filming Father and Son, a new television drama, she would get up at four every morning and go for a run along the canal before going to work. It was the dead of winter, pitch black and a dangerous hour to be bounding about but she didn't find it daunting.

"I love running at dawn," she tells me. "Yeah, it was still dark but it was hilarious. Every night I would get guys who'd fallen out of Leeson Street nightclubs trying to run along beside me. 'Jaysus girl, are you trying to get to Beijing?' they'd say. I could run faster than any of them. They were all pissed. No, it wasn't dangerous. The Garda station is right beside the canal in Rathmines."

In some ways, this recklessness is typical of the Irish actress; quirky, determined to do her own thing no matter how daft it looks and unafraid of taking risks. As long as she is passionate about something, she will throw herself headlong into it. Take acting. It is more than "just a job" for her. It matters hugely but right now she is at a time in her life when she is questioning how she lives and how she balances work and life. She is 35 now but this does not bother her unduly. Rather, she embraces getting older. This year, she spent three months in Los Angeles going for auditions and having meetings with her manager. She got a plum role in a big American television series but she couldn't take it as her work visa wasn't in order. With her papers now sorted, she is ready for work.

"Five years ago, I kind of bit myself on the arse by saying -- 'Oh, I'm going to LA'," she says. "I have a great manager over there and she wants me to move there but I'm not going to do that. You don't have to. In some ways it would be limiting to do that. I prefer to come and go. I might be going for an audition in LA but I still want to be able to do a great play in the Tricycle theatre [in London], if something comes up."

Does she find the LA scene difficult, with so many actresses looking like models, their faces and bodies fixed to perfection?

"I find it much easier going to LA now than when I went when I was 28. Back then I would go into a room and it was utterly terrifying. Every single girl was six foot eight and looked like Angelina Jolie. You just wanted to creep under the table and never come back. Also, it was so alien to everything that I was used to because over in London that wasn't going to get me any parts but there it definitely would."

Now age is no longer a threat. In fact, Flora sees getting older as a good thing.

"The people who have come in from Iowa and Delaware, the ones who were the local pageant queens and came to LA to get their lucky break, most of them have gone home because it didn't happen for them. The group going up for auditions is much smaller and the roles you are going up for are much better. You're not playing the ditsy girlfriend. You're playing the young wife and the young mother. The parts are much more interesting. Look at the actresses who are my age in The West Wing and Mad Men, they play fully rounded characters. Actually, it goes against you if you are devastatingly beautiful. It's all about good acting and the standard is so high in LA."

She gets fed up with people dissing LA as empty-headed Tinseltown. It has a greater concentration of creative people than anywhere else in the world, she tells me. And it has upped her game. Everybody is very driven there and highly professional. "It is not about evening dresses and parties and bright red lipstick," she says. Instead it is about getting up at five, going for a dawn run, before it gets hot, and then being early for auditions and doing her thing. In LA, she is in bed by 10 each night and at the weekends everyone she knows is recovering from having worked so hard during the week. While there, she stays with her friend the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (star of Brothers & Sisters). On a day off, they do simple things like going up to the canyon to fish for trout and swim under waterfalls. It is a healthy life and a calm one, where Flora gets herself focussed on going for parts.

In the new RTE drama Father and Son, she plays the part of a teacher who falls in love with a reformed gangster (played by Dougray Scott), whom she met while she was teaching in prison. Her character is six months pregnant. Was it strange going around with the false bump?

"I got very used to it. You rub it all the time and you become protective about it. After a while the film crew forgot that it was false. They would offer me their seats. One morning we were filming at the Ha'penny Bridge and the garda were there controlling traffic. I was chatting to one of them and we were talking about how beautiful the Liffey looked at dawn. He was very nice. Then later, after a scene, I was having a cigarette with Dougray and the garda glared over, as if I was the devil's spawn. At first I didn't realise why he was giving me such a dirty look and then I looked down at the bump and started shouting across. 'No, it's not real, I'm not really six months pregnant."

Did playing pregnant make her think about having babies ? After all, she is 35.

"It's not that I'm that aware of my body clock but it's more that I'm aware of the definite happiness that my friends have from being married and having children. I'm scared of the sacrifices that need to be made for that because I love what I do and I pray that I can have a life that can mix the two. I'm questioning the difference between having a drive and passion for what you do and selfishness. But then also if you're not true to yourself, you'll end up bitter and resentful."

I tell her that there isn't much fear of that. Flora comes across as a thoroughly grounded person and having the ability to laugh at herself will take her a long way. She mocks herself and the way she can swing from being a health freak doing Bikram yoga and eating sensibly, to downing 10 cups of coffee before an audition. She is the youngest of five, and she says that growing up, she was utterly spoilt. In her home near Strangford Lough, her parents created an idyllic life for them all. "It was lovely, long days by the beach, singing songs in the car and using our imagination. I know, it sounds like the perfect Blue Peter childhood."

She says that she is still on the phone to her family all the time.

"We are inseparable. At 35, I still haven't grown up. I'm probably heading for a major breakdown as I finally confront adulthood and come to terms with the fact that maybe I have to make some of my own decisions about life. We are a very close family. Because I have this strong and secure net, it makes you take risks because you know somebody is going to catch you when you fall. That can be an advantage and a disadvantage."

I tell her that I think having a close, loving family can only be a good thing. If nothing else, it keeps her from disappearing up her rear end, something not uncommon amongst successful actors. She agrees and tells me that her English boyfriend keeps her as grounded.

"Last night I told him that I was off to watch the first two parts of Father and Son, to prepare for this interview, and he said, 'Oh, off to have a little dive in lake me.'"

She laughs.

"The great thing is his attitude. I really respect his opinion. Because of all the insecurities with acting and the obsessive nature of trying to get it right, if you give an actor an inch, they'll take a mile. He doesn't let me get away with anything. That's really nice ... You know, life gets much easier the less you talk about yourself."

Father and Son is a four-part drama, starting on RTE One on Monday, June 29, at 9:30pm