Category: Interviews

Saoirse talks to BBC

Here is another great interview of Saoirse talking about ‘Brooklyn’ and her personal journey with BBC. Enjoy!

She is only 21 but Saoirse Ronan is tipped to earn her second Oscar nomination for her role in the tearjerker Brooklyn. It is her most personal role yet and the Irish-American actress struggles with tears as she talks about the film festival favourite.

“It’s been amazing to see the reaction,” says Ronan.

The film was first screened to rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in January and most recently at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

“Every festival we’ve gone to… you’re on edge because you think ‘Oh god is the reaction going to be as strong as it was the first time?’ or will that have died down or worn off and it just didn’t, it just got better and better.”

She stars in Brooklyn as Eilis Lacey, a young woman from rural Ireland in the 1950s, who has to leave her home to find job opportunities and a future in the US.

The film has been adapted from Colm Toibin’s New York Times Bestseller by Nick Hornby, who was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for An Education.

Many audience members have been in tears, including Ronan herself.

“Oh yes, I wept within the first five minutes,” she says. Continue reading

Brooklyn Interviews

Published

by Jess

on Nov 04, 2015

Saoirse talks to the Irish Independent

The Independent.ie has just published a great new interview with Saoirse entitled “Saoirse Ronan finds her freedom” and you can read it below:

Saoirse Ronan is something of an anomaly. Not only is it unusual to meet a young person who’s more into Chekhov than Snapchat, it’s also incredibly rare to meet someone so young and well-known who is completely down-to-earth. Despite massive success from the age of 13, she’s as ordinary as any other 21-year-old woman – although with arguably far more life experience, and far less dependence on her smartphone.

It’s not a big jump to draw parallels between her and another beautiful young actress who has grown up before us on screen, Emma Watson. The Harry Potter star is the face an international campaign for gender equality, called He for She. Her rousing speech to the UN on the issue last year reignited a global conversation about feminism. Does Saoirse – who last week spoke out in favour of wage equality – identify herself as a feminist?

“I guess I always have been, but never really realised,” she says. “For as long as I’ve been doing interviews, I’ve referred to myself as an actor and I never thought anything of it. But people would always correct me on it and say: ‘You’re an actress!’ When you understand what feminism is, it’s just the desire to be treated completely equally.

“I want us to get to the point where we don’t have to talk about this any more, where it’s just normal. Where you don’t have to point out a director is female, they’re just a director. That’s when things will have changed, and for the better.

“I love playing women – and what I mean by that is real characters, not just specified as ‘the girlfriend’ or ‘the sister’. And I think we’re getting there, with actors like Cate Blanchett and great female-centric films like Trainwreck and Bridesmaids.”
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Interviews

Published

by Jess

on Nov 02, 2015

(Video) A Celebration of Saoirse’s Career at SFV

Scott Feinberg moderated a conversation with Saoirse about her career after a screening of ‘Brooklyn’ at the Savannah Film Festival last week. THR has recently shared the video on their website, and you can watch it below.

Brooklyn Interviews Videos

Published

by Jess

on Oct 31, 2015

(Photos) Saoirse for Backstage Magazine

Saoirse has recently spoken to Backstage magazine about ‘Brooklyn’, and the article has just been released. Our gallery was updated with a photoshoot featured in the issue, and you can read her interview below.

Photoshoots > 2015 > Session 034

Eilis Lacey is a girl on the cusp of womanhood in “Brooklyn,” director John Crowley’s adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel. Leaving behind her rural hometown in Ireland, Eilis is heading into an uncertain future in 1950s New York. And though the period setting might seem distancing, the story of growth and the nature of home spoke directly to star Saoirse Ronan.

“As you leave home, you’re never able to take that step back,” Ronan says. “The realization that I had is that no matter what, once you have an experience that is separate from your home life and from your family and where you grew up, you will never be the same again. You will never be the person that you’d have been had you stayed.”

Sitting over hors d’oeuvres at Manhattan’s Crosby Street Hotel, Ronan is referring not only to screenwriter Nick Hornby’s script (which charts Eilis’ move to Brooklyn; her first love; and her return to Ireland upon a family member’s death), but also to her own life. When Crowley first approached her about the role several years ago, Ronan was in the midst of planning a permanent move from her parents’ house in Dublin to London. Much like Eilis’ emigration to Brooklyn, Ronan’s move to London was her unequivocal leap into independence and adulthood—one she made just before filming “Brooklyn.”

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Articles Brooklyn Interviews Photoshoots

Published

by Jess

on Oct 29, 2015

Saoirse talks to The Telegraph

The Telegraph has published a great article about Saoirse on their website, celebrating her career and her latest sucess in ‘Brooklyn’. Read it below.

Saoirse Ronan has beautiful pale-blue eyes. Every director she has worked with has chosen to focus on this at some point, because they express so much. As Ian McEwan said of her breakthrough role in the film of his novel Atonement, ‘She gives us thought processes right on screen, even before she speaks, and conveys so much with her eyes.’ Which makes it all the more distressing when, during our meeting, they suddenly fill with tears.

I am telling her how much I enjoyed her latest film, Brooklyn, which went to Sundance Film Festival early this year as a small indie vying for attention and came out as an Oscar contender. Ronan ends up apologising for getting emotional. ‘I’ve never worked as hard as that, and I definitely needed a bit of emotional support because it’s too close to home,’ she says.

‘For people to respond to it as well as they have – I have to say it’s a dream.’ She has not seen the film, she admits later. ‘I can’t. Just talking about it, you can see I’m a basket case. In a couple of years, or when I have kids or something, we’ll all sit and watch it together.’

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Articles Interviews Saoirse Ronan Fan

Published

by Jess

on Oct 25, 2015

NY Times Interview & Portrait

We have a new great interview of Saoirse and she talks about Brooklyn, Ireland and moving away from her home. Also, be sure to check out the beautiful portrait in our gallery.

It’s a mystery to Saoirse Ronan why she’s one of the few Irish actresses to burst onto the world’s stage in the last 50 years or so.

Irish actors are another story: They’ve been coming up in droves. Colin Farrell, Michael Fassbender (who is half German, but was raised in Ireland from the age of 2), Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Stephen Rea and Gabriel Byrne are just some of the Emerald Isle’s menfolk to find Hollywood success. A few Irish actresses have, too, albeit to a lesser extent — among them Sinead Cusack, Fionnula Flanagan, Fiona Shaw and Brenda Fricker, who won an Academy Award for her role in “My Left Foot” (1989). But at least in the United States, none are exactly household names. The last Irish actress to really make a splash in the United States was Maureen O’Hara, who recently turned 95.

“I think a lot of it comes down to luck; I think a lot of it comes down to timing,” Ms. Ronan, who is 21, said recently over breakfast at the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo. “I don’t know why some of the male actors moved ahead while we didn’t.”

Ms. Ronan’s might not be a household name quite yet, but that’s partly because Americans remain largely incapable of pronouncing it (it’s “SEER-sha”). She was the young baker with the Mexico-shaped birthmark in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” the luminous teenage assassin in “Hanna,” the slain girl who narrates the “The Lovely Bones,” and the tweenage aristocrat who set the plot in motion in “Atonement,” a performance that earned Ms. Ronan an Oscar nomination at the age of 13. Continue reading

Brooklyn Interviews Photoshoots

Published

by Jess

on Oct 22, 2015

W Magazine Interview & Photo Session

W Magazine has published a great new interview with Saoirse, as well as a very interesting photoshoot, which you can see on our photo gallery. Read the article below.

Photoshoots > 2015 > Session 031

SAOIRSE RONAN: QUEEN OF HEARTS

Actress Saoirse Ronan, star of the coming-of-age romance Brooklyn, is stealing them left and right.

“I’ve had to spell out my name for confused people my entire life,” said Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha) Ronan, the star of Brooklyn, in theaters this month. Ronan was calling from her home in Ireland, not far from Enniscorthy, where the film was shot. Brooklyn is based on the Colm Tóibín novel about a young Irish girl who immigrates to America in the 1950s; following a family tragedy, she must choose between her new life in New York and her former one, in Ireland. It’s an old-fashioned story, in the best sense. At a time when strong heroines of the non–comic book variety are increasingly rare, Eilis Lacey, as played by Ronan, is spirited, confused, independent, and unique. “She’s complex, but I would say, somewhat proudly, that Eilis is Irish,” Ronan continued. “And being Irish is part of the reason I never wanted to change my name, even when it was strongly suggested. Saoirse means ‘freedom.’ And my middle name, Una, means ‘unity.’ Freedom and unity—that’s quite a lot to live up to.”

Ronan, who is 21, actually was born in the Bronx. Her parents left their native Ireland in the ’80s in search of work. In New York, Ronan’s mother was employed as a nanny and her father tended bar at a place that was popular with actors from the Irish Repertory Theatre. “They convinced my dad to audition for a play,” Ronan said. “He did it as a lark, but got the part.” When Ronan was 3, her family returned to Ireland; her dad, whose acting career was starting to take off, noticed that she loved being filmed. “I am an only child, and I would disappear into my own world. I staged long, intricate soap operas with my dolls. My father saw that I was drawn to the camera, and I think he felt it took me out of myself.”

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Interviews Photoshoots

Published

by Jess

on Oct 19, 2015