Saoirse has recently talked to USA Today about her upcoming film, ‘Brooklyn’, in which she played her first Irish character. We have updated our photo gallery with a photo session that was releasedwith the article, and you can watch her interview below.

NEW YORK — Until Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronan had never played an Irish character in a movie. But what could seem like a major casting oversight is actually no coincidence.

“There’s a phrase back at home, when something is ‘diddly idle,’ ” says Ronan, 21, with a grin. “That’s when someone tries to do this stereotypical Irish film, where everyone’s a farmer and we’ve never seen the big city.

“We’ve done that and seen that and most of the time, it feels quite flat,” she adds. “So I was waiting for something like this to come along.”

In the 1950s-set Brooklyn (opens Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles, before expanding nationwide Nov. 25), Ronan plays a young Irish woman named Eilis Lacey whose older sister, Rose, arranges for her to move to New York in hopes of finding better opportunities. Taking a job at a department store, enrolling in night class and falling for a sweet Italian boy, Tony (Emory Cohen), Eilis overcomes homesickness and embraces her city life — that is, until she’s called back to Ireland under grave circumstances, and must choose between her two homes and suitors (Domhnall Gleeson, as Irish beau Jim, who falls for her when she returns).

Continue reading