I love London (...and Slough)

Dressed in jeans and tight white T-shirt, Hollywood's one-time hellraiser still has a faint - a very faint - whiff of bad boy about him. Indeed, it is London's "edge" - "a frisson, like LA or New York, where I grew up, a sense that something might happen at any moment" - that he particularly appreciates. And the capital's private-members bars, such as Soho House and the Century Club, which are regular haunts.

"There's more of a relaxed vibe in London," he says. "In LA, you can't smoke anywhere [Slater is a Marlboro Light man] and though London has a very dirty underbelly, on the surface at least it's a clean city."

He has noticed that London women are more "up front and authentic", compared to LA women, whom he found "muddied over with a certain gloss". He says he can't help but notice, though, that we "seem to drink a hell of a lot".

"But there's a lot less judgment here," he says. "Nobody is counting anyone's drinks or watching how you behave."

Slater famously had his own problems with alcohol. Of all the Generation X pin-ups - he starred in Heathers, with Winona Ryder, in 1991, and True Romance, 1993, with Patricia Arquette - he seemed to capture the hedonistic, early Nineties zeitgeist most precisely.

Indeed, 1993 was the year in which River Pheonix died of a drugs overdose outside an LA nightclub. At 24, Slater was a year older and his life, too, was out of control. "I had fame at an early age," he says, "and, yeah, that opened doors, but it was also confusing and overwhelming and frightening. I didn't really know who I was at that time, I didn't have a clear grasp on my personality.

"One of the great things about alcohol is that it quells those feelings of anxiety or fear. It was a helpful tool to me - and it was also a hindering tool because things got out of control."

After a threemonth prison sentence following his arrest for assault in 1998, Slater "got religion". A book called Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch set him "on the road to spirituality" - and also acquired him a first date with his wife, Ryan Haddon, a former journalist and TV presenter, whom he saw reading the book at a gym. As well as Eliana, the couple have a five-year-old son, Jaden - although it hasn't always been an entirely smooth ride.

Last year, Ryan spent a night in jail for apparently hitting her husband with a glass in a hotel room in Las Vegas. The newspapers said he needed nine stitches. "The press has a version and then there's the real one," protests Slater.

"Things are never so dramatic. You have a row and someone hears about it, and then it becomes a story. But I can honestly say that my wife is a pacifist." He chuckles a little. "She's a very peaceful woman and I couldn't love a human being more."

There will be no London Christmas this year, however, although the couple did their shopping together in Regent Street one afternoon last week: "We got all the kids' presents from Hamleys."

Slater will spend his few days off with family in Florida, although he may take some DVD copies of The Office, featuring his Cuckoo's Nest co-star MacKenzie Crook, as gifts. "That's another thing about Britain," he says. "I love the comedy, the sense of humour. I spent hours cringing in front of The Office." Loving London is one thing; loving Slough quite another.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest plays at the Gielgud Theatre until 22 January.