historien til kiefer sutherland fanger essensen i shane:
Sutherland, 56, begins his story which started in a Dublin club in the '90s about 'two or three in the morning,' where he ran into Sinead O'Connor, Van Morrison, Ronnie Wood, and MacGowan.
'That's something you're never going to see. I knew Ronnie so he invited me up to say hello and I introduced myself,' he told host Ryan Tubridy, adding: 'I couldn't help but noticing that Sinead O'Connor was drinking milk and everybody else was not.'
Upon taking a seat, the 24 star said he then made the 'cardinal mistake' of bringing up politics: finding out that he and MacGowan had very different takes on the history of Scotland.
'And before you know it, the two of us were fighting,' he recalled. 'We were rolling around on the floor and I remember Van Morrison laughing.'
'I won't get into the fight, but it ended. And I got up and I said, "I'm embarrassed, I'm very sorry" and I walked away,' he continued, adding: 'Shane MacGowan at that time had a cast on his arm that looked as well lived in as anything that I'd ever seen. So fighting just seemed unfair.'
Excusing himself, Sutherland went to the bar and to get a drink, and realized 'hours later' that the bar's almost empty.
'[Then] I get a tap on my shoulder. And it's Shane MacGowan,' the bemused actor said. 'He says, "I need a place to stay." I said, "You've got to be kidding me, three hours ago we were fighting on the floor."'
An incredulous MacGowan replied, 'That was three hours ago, now I need a place to stay,' Sutherland recalled, saying the singer then announced his friends had gone.
'I was so impressed with his directness so I asked him to have a last drink, we walked back to my hotel, I got out bunch of blankets and made a bed for him on the couch and he went to sleep and I went to sleep,' he said.
The next morning, the actor woke to discover MacGowan had gone - but left a beautiful note depicting how grateful he was to Sutherland.
'I got up in the morning expecting him to still be there because it was quite early, and all the blankets were perfectly folded,' he recalled.
'You couldn't have done it better - the pillow was on top of the blankets, and I looked over to the desk, there was a note that he had written on the hotel stationery.'
'And it was the most beautiful letter I'd ever read, it was like poetry.
'And it was just a thank you note, but it was so generous, and the things he had to say about me and our night and humanity. It was quite long.'
Sutherland continued: 'I've still got the letter to this day, and it changed my perspective, don't judge a book by its cover and very rarely trust first encounters.'