It is, perhaps, to Kiefer Sutherland’s great credit (and also rather ironic) that even though his latest film is called Mirrors, he isn’t a fan of them. Unlike some Hollywood narcissists, he’s uncomfortable, for example, in restaurants with mirrored walls. “They bother the sh** out of me,” he says. In his house, a vast converted ironworks in LA’s unfashionable Silver Lake district, he has just one mirror that he keeps in his ­bathroom for essential maintenance checks. “I mean, you have to be ready for work and stuff. But I’ve never been thrilled by my own reflection. To be honest, I try to avoid it.”

All of this made the filming of Mirrors, a genuinely scary horror film about a man on the edge of a breakdown who begins to see all sorts of terrifying things through the looking glass, a bizarre and somewhat challenging experience. “I didn’t really think very clearly about the fact that I would be looking into mirrors performing scenes and that I would have to watch myself act, and it was the most unsettling part of the film. It was ­completely disorientating.

“I started to realise that if you take a good, long look in a ­mirror it’s a portal into yourself. And the moral of the movie is ‘Be careful what you look for and who you think you are and what you think you want.’ When you see yourself as you really are, it can be a very personal and a very scary experience.”

Still, though Sutherland may eschew the mirror in a literal sense, it’s plain that he’s been gazing into the metaphorical one for months now. A 48-day stint in the county jail over last Christmas on a drink-driving rap gave him plenty of time to reflect.

Mostly, his days were spent either in total seclusion in his cell (bare stone walls, a stainless steel sink and toilet) or working in the laundry room, presumably making sure the orange jumpsuits worn by inmates – including him – were on the appropriate wash cycle.

“I did a lot of folding clothes and thinking about what I was doing in there,” he says. And although it might be going too far to suggest he is a changed man, he is certainly humbled, apologetic for what he did and determined, most of all, that he won’t be going back.

“I keep feeling I should say something more about it. But I made a mistake and I was lucky because people have been really supportive. I don’t ever want to make a joke of it. There were people who were upset about it and they had a right to be because it’s a dangerous thing to do and I regret it very much.”

In September last year, Sutherland had finished another long, 14-hour day on the set of 24 – the TV series in which he plays terrorist hunter Jack Bauer – when he stopped off for a drink on the way home. Later, when police pulled him over in West Los Angeles after he made an illegal U-turn, he was breathalysed and found to be more than three times over the legal limit.

He was already on probation for another drink driving offence from December 2004 and in court pleaded no contest to two DUI (driving under the influence) charges. He was sentenced to 48 days in Glendale City Jail – a facility which houses murderers, rapists and gang members – and was also placed on probation for five years, fined $510 and ordered to attend an alcohol education programme.

“People make mistakes. I never lied about it being a mistake and I had to go through what I had to go through for it,” he says.

“I was incredibly cross with myself for it. It was careless and I wasn’t thinking. Hopefully that’s behind me and I’m moving on. I’ve never had a traffic accident in my life, but if I did in that situation and I had hurt someone, well, your life is over. It was so stupid.

“Especially someone in my situation because it’s quite easy not to do it. I ended up going there straight after work because we’d worked late. I had a car planned for me that night and I didn’t use it. And at some point you go, ‘Well, I’m going to have to get up early and get the car if I leave it here.’ It was really dumb.”

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