HOLLYWOOD has now slammed to a halt thanks to Covid-19 but Mary Elizabeth Winstead was weirdly ahead of the curve.

‘I am consciously taking a few months off to really kind of just “be”,’ the Fargo TV show actress explains over the phone from her Manhattan apartment just before the pandemic hits the city. ‘I haven’t had time off for years and years and years, so it’s a kind of scary feeling. But it’s also really nice — and much needed, I think.’

Career-wise, she’s been flying high, with the release of her latest films, The Parts You Lose (2019) and Birds Of Prey (2020).

But, personally, it’s been a gruelling few years. In late 2017, the then 32-year-old was snapped kissing married co-star Ewan McGregor (then 46) with whom she starred in the third season of Fargo. She had newly split from husband Riley Stearns (who she had first met aged 18). McGregor divorced his wife of 22 years soon after, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’. His daughter, Clara, then called Winstead a ‘piece of trash’ on Instagram (an action she now regrets).

‘I just don’t go on social media now,’ is Winstead’s response when questioned about her online abuse. ‘I don’t think it adds much value to my life. I just focus on myself and being the best version of me that I can be.’

There’s inherently something of the natural born survivor about Mary Elizabeth.

The youngest of five children, she’s been acting professionally (and constantly) since the age of 12. The Ring Two, her 2005 big-screen debut, was the first of a string of horror movies on her mighty CV, including Final Destination 3 and Black Christmas.

‘Early on in my career my options were play someone’s girlfriend, who is just sitting there looking really cute in a nice dress, or play this girl who is going through this insane experience where someone is trying to kill her and she is running for her life, screaming, falling into the dirt and trying to get up,’ she laughs. ‘For me, it was just a no-brainer.’

Does she see herself as a ‘survivor girl’? ‘I don’t know if I necessarily wake up in the morning feeling like a strong badass! But I do really love getting to go through that struggle and fight on screen as a character and feel a bit stronger coming out the other end of it.’

Playing the Huntress, in recent super-villainess blockbuster, Birds Of Prey, presented another such role — a lonely mafia daughter seeking bloody vengeance on those who killed her family. ‘I guess I identified a little bit with the Huntress growing up and not having a huge social life because I didn’t go to high school or college, because I have been acting since I was so young. Not that my life was being around assassins! But I was around adults mostly on set, so I did have my own kind of strange childhood.’

She’s used to playing daughters — including Bruce Willis’s in the last two Die Hard films. However, the thriller The Parts You Lose casts her as the protective mother to a deaf son (young deaf actor Danny Murphy). Winstead jumped at the part, not just for that challenge, but because it reunited her with Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul. In 2012 they co-starred as a married alcoholic couple in an indie flick called Smashed, which won Winstead several awards.

‘I was a huge Breaking Bad fan and back then it was right at the height of that, so I was really excited working with Aaron with everyone on the street shouting “Yo, bitch!” at him!’

Her PR twitches when I ask her if she’ll be working with McGregor again (after Birds Of Prey). So I stick to safer love life territory — her fluffy white Maltese dog, Ambrosius.

‘She’s 11 now and I’ve had her since she was a puppy,’ Winstead coos. ‘She hates not being brought to work so she usually ends up being cuddled in the make-up trailer all day.’

Leisure might be hard for Winstead to get her head around but Ambrosius is lapping up the extra mummy time.

■ The Parts You Lose is available on digital download now