KENNETH Branagh was back in Belfast last month to promote his latest movie, Sleuth, and to reminisce about the time he spent growing up in the Northern Ireland city where he was born.

Branagh and his family left the North for England when he was nine years old, and in an interview with the Irish Independent he noticed the positive changes that have taken root since his departure 37 years ago.

Belfast, he said, holds a "certain amount of melancholy" for him, especially as his parents have passed away. "It was always connected to them every time I would come back. And now it's not," he shared.

"I might have to come back more often though," he added. "This place seems to have changed as much as I have."

Leaving in the first place, though, was quite difficult for a boy of nine. The Branaghs took refuge in England because of the spiraling violence in the North.

"I had massive numbers of relations (in Belfast). It was big and village-like at the same time. It gave me a secure sense of who I was - that was probably rather ruptured by the leaving," Branagh said.

Making things worse was having to "de-Irish" himself once he got to England, in an effort to blend in with his new friends.

"I had a really broad accent when I went over. And nobody could understand a f**ing word I said," Branagh recalls.

"So I did what I could, and that meant changing my accent. But that brought its own guilt. I felt I was letting my parents down."

The folks were also worried about their son's choice of career, Branagh shared. Acting, for most, isn't the steadiest way of bringing home the bacon, and the Branaghs were hoping their son would be more sensible.

"It was a very Irish quality of theirs - 'Don't get above yourself' or, as my mother used to say, 'Catch yourself awn,'" said Branagh, imitating his mother's Belfast accent.

The rest, as they say, is history. Branagh's career has soared on stage and screen, and his old hometown hasn't done so badly in the intervening years either.

"It's extraordinary," Branagh said of all the good that has come out of the Irish peace process. "The place has certainly changed a lot since I was last here."