Killed by Jamie and kicked by Amy... now star Karen faces more torture!

SHE was savaged by Jamie Dornan’s serial killer in The Fall, garrotted by a French king in Vikings and kicked hard by Amy Huberman in Finding Joy.

Now actress Karen Hassan faces suffering of an entirely different kind in acclaimed new movie Cellar Door, in which her character, Aidie, goes through mental torture as she tries to find out what happened to her newborn son after arriving in a mother-and-baby home in the ’50s.

The film, which has its premiere at Dublin’s Cineworld on Wednesday night before going on general release on January 25, was awarded Best First Irish Feature at the 2018 Galway Film Fleadh. Its director Viko Nikci also won a new talent award.

Belfast native Hassan, 37, pictured, who recently appeared as a police officer in the BBC crime drama Doing Money, which focused on the trafficking of women, said she was desperate to play the part.

‘I auditioned a year previous and thought it had gone away and I was bereft,’ said the actress. ‘A year later I got a phone call saying, “Are you still interested?” I had walked out of a Tube station in London and my friend was with me and I was shaking. It was one of those weird scripts I had a real connection with.

‘When I read the whole thing I was bowled over. When I went to talk to Viko I was literally floored. I had to go and have a cup of tea.

‘I don’t know what it was with me and the script but it was just a strange feeling I had towards it.

‘I felt like I was stitched into it in some way, I don’t know what it is but I had to play this part. And I said that to Viko. It’s absolutely one of my best roles ever. I’ve enjoyed other jobs equally such as Vikings, where I loved playing the temptress opposite Owen Roe. I played the conniving Therese, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and that was a brilliant series to be on, challenging and fun.

‘But to get handed a script where your character is on every page and goes through such an emotional journey, Cellar Door is definitely the role that I was craving.’

As well as dramatising the emotional trauma of losing her baby, Hassan also had to tackle some major physical hurdles for the part.

The film opens with her character submerged in a bath, and the actress had to learn to hold her breath and act underwater. ‘I’m underwater the entire time and there’s no trickery,’ she said. ‘But I did loads of research and invented these clever little nose plugs and a very good make-up artist helped me make them.’

As well as appearing in Cellar Door, the rising star, who spent two years in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks as Lynsey Nolan, has also featured in the BBC’s Northern Irish comedy Soft Border Patrol, a satire on Brexit.