In reality, they are running away from the death of their youngest son back in Ireland.The dilapidated tenement block the young family inhabits is filled with drug dealers and oddballs - mostly of them also illegal immigrants - who emerge out of the shadows to fill the screen, acting as a visual counterbalance to Johnny's grief-stricken, ghost-like visage.When I speak with Sheridan again, it is a different affair He is at his home in Dublin on a bright autumn morning. Hollywood could not be further away. Sitting anonymously in their midst is Jim Sheridan, the multiple-Oscar-nominated director behind tough, moralistic films such as My Left Foot and In The Name Of The Father. Dressed casually and talking in hushed tones with friends, his eyes occasionally dart around the pub to record its sights and sounds.It seems like he has been here for years; instead, he has arrived just five minutes before, having just unveiled his movie, In America, to the public at the Tricycle Cinema across the road...This scene was played out 18 months ago, and was a memorable moment for the 60 of us who had gathered to see the unfinished feature (then called East of Harlem). The patrons sit in small huddles of two or three, nursing pints and talking animatedly, squeezing the last drops of merriment out of the weekend. It is Sunday night in the Black Lion pub on London's Kilburn High Road Shane MacGowan's "Dirty Old Town" is on the jukebox. As his director mentioned, he had a tough and lonely childhood, without much money.

In 1993, his father, Vincent, was convicted of robbing a bank in his home town of Reseda, California. He's been in famous brawls alongside old pal Leo DiCaprio when his posse were on the razzle in LA and New York (no doubt those days are long behind him in his new sober mode). He's not quite the squeaky-clean boy of his popular image.The curious thing is that Spider-Man has not transformed him at all, and that his basic ambiguity - is he cynical or kind, ugly or beautiful, boy or man, feminine or masculine? - remains gloriously intact.As he stubs out his cigar and prepares to leave for his flight to Germany, I ask him one last question. Ang Lee said that he had an innocence - what is the nature of your innocence? He smiles at the question. "It's a Jekyll and Hyde thing," he says, as his minders come in to collect him..

Does he ride now every day? "I love riding, but I live in LA and I'd have to drive - so it's more like a special occasion when I do."Seabiscuit is the story of an underdog, which is another reason Maguire likes it. How was his back after all that horse-riding in Seabiscuit? "It was fine," he croaks. "It didn't aggravate my back any further and if I take care of myself I'm basically in no pain. I've had some discomfort over the years depending on what I was up to, playing lots of basketball and things like that.