Northern Ireland actress Paula Malcomson has attributed her success to her “Belfast directness”, saying that Hollywood “could always rely on me to say what I thought”.

n an interview with the Times, the Hunger Games star said: “I am a very proud Belfast girl. My directness was appreciated in Hollywood.

“Seemingly it’s not always this way — people don’t tell the truth. But they could always rely on me to say what I thought.”

When Malcomson was 19, she emigrated to New York alone. “I had some misfortune here in Northern Ireland and lost someone close to me,” she said.

“I needed to go, to start anew. I don’t know how well thought out it was, but I just went.”

In the early 2000s, before her big break as Trixie in the acclaimed American western series Deadwood, Malcomson considered giving up on acting altogether.

“You imagine the life you could have had. Who would I be if I hadn’t left?” she said.

“I’ve been lucky to do the things I’ve gotten to do. It wasn’t an aspirational time when I left. Some people got really lucky, some didn’t. I feel like I did.”

Having left home for the US three decades ago, the east Belfast actress now spends her time between Northern Ireland and LA, with a lot of her recent projects being filmed in Belfast.

“For a long time, I was just working in the US. I was working non-stop on TV for about 11 years, but there has always been this longing to be home,” she said.

“I was no longer the girl who left but the woman who comes back with everything I’ve learnt. I’d been gone for 30 years.”

She believed she needed to achieve a certain degree of success in Tinseltown before returning home, especially because she had left school aged just 15.

“I needed to get my own back on the people who didn’t believe in me,” Malcomson continued.

“There was probably a sense from the school I went to that I was the least likely to succeed. I wanted to come back with a full cargo.”

Malcomson starred in the 2018 science-fiction series Krypton, which was filmed in Belfast. That same year, she also had a lead role in the BBC mini-series Come Home, which was also shot in the city.

In the latter, she played a woman who walked out on her husband and children.

The series focused on familial estrangement — similar to her latest project Redemption.

Malcomson said it was a subject close to her heart.

“There’s a certain feeling of exile, whether it’s self-exiled or imposed. I think there’s always something that you carry, a longing,” she added.

In Redemption, the 51-year-old plays an unflappable police officer called Colette Cunningham, who travels from England to Dublin, where her estranged daughter has been found dead.

Malcomson’s character helps the gardai in their investigation while struggling to come to terms with her past.

“While you could perceive this as a crime drama when it begins, it quickly turns into a family drama,” she said.

“There’s a backwards nature to the story — she has to discover her daughter’s life without her, the grandchildren she has not known.

“It’s tinged with regret. I think this show, these six episodes, is a meditation on grief.”

Redemption is on Virgin Media One and Virgin Media More on Easter Monday at 9pm