SIR Kenneth Branagh has spoken of "exciting times" for the city of his birth, with international demand for filming now outstripping studio space and his boyhood team in its first tournament finals in 30 years.
As Northern Ireland players warmed up on Friday at Windsor Park for their final friendly match before the Euros, the Oscar-nominated film-maker sat in the nearby QFT film studio in south Belfast marvelling at how times have changed.
Just a stone's throw from his childhood home in Tigers Bay work has begun on North Foreshore Studios, a new £20 million, 120,000sq ft filming complex.
"What a fantastic problem that is," he said.
"To have not enough studio space here to accommodate all the people that want to come here and make films."
Like the rest of the viewing public, he has been glued to recent TV hits filmed in Northern Ireland including BBC's Line of Duty, ITV's The Secret and HBO's all-conquering Game of Thrones.
When Branagh was filming the `Billy Plays' which made his name in the 1980s, "we were up at Balmoral (showgrounds) for six months of the year when its agricultural usage was specially changed to allow us to go and shoot 90 minutes of television".
Now, the Hollywood star doesn't need to "bang the drum" for his home because it has been showcased in the best way imaginable through Game of Thrones, a "landscape changing piece of work".
"(Not only the scenery of Northern Ireland), but its craft, make-up, costumes... it's absolutely amazing, amazing what's going on here. The standard is incredibly high. People are very, very impressed by how things are done here across seven seasons of Game of Thrones."
Branagh would "have to get in the queue" if he was to film one of his blockbusters here, as he "would love to".
He was in town to talk about Shakespeare on the screen, to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death, and is as well placed as anyone, having brought five of his plays to the silver screen.
A theatre production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Branagh is currently playing in London's West End and will be broadcast to cinemas across the UK on July 7, and thereafter be available to schools.
The show will be directed on the night by Ben Caron who was behind the camera for Branagh's latest Wallander series currently running on BBC One, because some of the movements and facial expressions "can be too much for a cinema screen (and you) have to craft it differently".
"You get a little whiff of that excitement (of live theatre)," he said.
Branagh's own first whiff of theatre came not from Shakespeare, but seeing Joseph Tomelty at the Grove Theatre as the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, taken by his brother Bill.
He was "aware then of Stephen Rea. He was talked about in our household as being a real, proper actor".
"There was great pride in those that were very high achieving... that he had the same background.
"I was interested in acting and theatre from a distance."
His last performance in Northern Ireland was the farce Painkiller at the Lyric, but Belfast homecomings have been frequent over the years.
"Coming back is returning to a place that gave me my first job. I have a very exciting time in the theatre, it has hosted premiers of every film I've made," he said.
"I come here and always feel there's a welcoming and an honest audience."
And wherever he is, he will be cheering on Michael O'Neill's `Green and White' army enthusiastically next month.
"It's exciting times, I'm keeping everything crossed for the next couple of weeks," Branagh said, adding that it is the year for `The Leicester Effect' to see "minnows succeed".
