Hello, in this programme I'm talking face to face with one of the very best actors this country has produced.

His career spans six decades and it's seen him work with the cream of the business on stage, on film and on television,

winning him countless laurels in the process,

the highlight of which may well have been his BAFTA and Oscar nominations last year for his part in Kenneth

Brana's nostalgic look back at his home city in the film Belfast.

Kieran Hines, welcome to Red Lines.

Thank you very much, Mark.

This is a conversation about political awakenings and political influences, and we'll dive into

that in just a moment.

But staying with Ken Brana for a minute or two more, he's a few years younger than you,

but of course you were growing up in the same city, not very far away from each other at

all when the troubles were kicking off in the late 1960s.

Your backgrounds and circumstances were different, but there must have been some sense of

shared experience too. I knew immediately when Ken sent me the script that I knew, although we came from,

as they say here, different sides of the fence, I was brought up a Catholic, he's brought up a Protestant,

but what he had written was about the same people, either Catholic or

Protestant, the whole flavor, the whole sense of humor, the sense of commitment to each other

to people around. I recognized that completely amongst my family, and obviously Kemm is

writing from his own heart and his memory of his family family and to me there wasn't a blind bit of difference

yeah it was about the spirit of the people

from the north of Ireland or from Belfast particularly

At a time of such political upheaval

...