Category: Interviews

Saoirse’s interview for Hypable

Selina Wilken from Hypable had the chance to talk to Saoirse during the BFI London Film Festival, and the interview is already online. They talked about Brooklyn, female directors, stories from the Atonement set and more!

Why ‘Brooklyn’ is Saoirse Ronan’s most personal project yet
Saoirse Ronan describes Brooklyn as, “Very challenging, but the most rewarding film I’ve ever done.”

“Just the effect it has on me… I don’t know what it is, I’m still very much awash with emotion,” she admits. “Eilis, and Eilis’ story, is just a huge part of who I am.”

In the past, Ronan has always looked for roles that allowed her to step away from herself and play varied, interesting characters. But in Brooklyn, she really found herself empathizing with Eilis on a personal level. “And I think because it was so close to me, to not have any separation at all was actually a lot scarier, and it was a lot more vulnerable,” she reflects.

“Someone said to me that it’s a very delicate film and it’s such a great way to describe it, cause simple was never the right word,” says Ronan. “It’s an incredibly emotional film. We all know what that feeling [of leaving home] is like, what that heaviness is like.”

“The realization sets in that you can’t go back, that once you’ve made that step, you can never go back to how it was, before you left, and you can’t prepare yourself for that, you know? That’s not something that anyone tells you about really, when you leave home.”

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Brooklyn Interviews
Published
by Jess
on Oct 12, 2015

Saoirse’s interview for AwardsDaily

While doing press for the upcoming acclaimed ‘Brooklyn’, Saoirse sat down with Jordan Ruimy from AwardsDaily to discuss the film and you can read the interview below:

It is no surprise that Saoirse Ronan gives one of the most deeply felt and wonderful female performances of the year in Brooklyn. After all, this is an actress who was nominated for an Oscar when she was just 13 years old for her pivotal role in Joe Wright’s Atonement. “When Atonement happened I was just a kid, and I can’t say I expected the nomination to happen” she tells me. Now 21 years old, Ronan has blossomed into everything we thought she could be. In recent years she has starred in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, kicked serious cojones in Hanna and most recently was cast as Zero’s secret crush in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. This all in a span of just six years.

Brooklyn is a beautifully made film about good, well-intentioned people trying to do their best in life. The gorgeously crisp and colorful cinematography by Yves Belanger is to die for, as is the direction by John Crowley, which is stylishly slick enough to harken back to a time when handsomely made, feel-good pictures worked marvelously well in Hollywood. This is an old-fashioned movie done right, a heartfelt effort by people who very much care about story and character. The screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, and captures his usual impeccable ear for small talk. Saoirse Ronan plays Ellis, an Irish girl who moves to New York to start a new life, but finds herself doubting that decision once there. The movie will make her a household name, and there’s already talk of a possible Oscar nominations for her performance –- which originally had Rooney Mara cast in the lead role –- and the film itself, which is exactly the kind of crowd-pleasing treat the Academy eyes year after year. “I pronounce it Sersha,” she tells me of her name. We might as well learn it well because a performer with this much natural, freewheeling talent and personality doesn’t come along often.

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Brooklyn Interviews
Published
by Jess
on Oct 11, 2015

Saoirse Covers the Cara Magazine

Saoirse graces the cover of the Irish in-flight CARA magazine available on all Aer Lingus flights. She talks about movies, playing realistic women and about her Broadway debut. Be sure to check out the new gorgeous pictures.

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Magazine Scans > 2015 > Cara (October/November)
Photoshoots > 2015 > Session 027
Interviews Magazine Scans Photoshoots
Published
by Jess
on Oct 01, 2015

Saoirse talks to The Irish Sun

The Irish Sun has just posted a new interview with Saoirse in which she speaks out about huge gap between what male and female stars earn in Hollywood and about her plans of moving to New York next year.

The 21-year-old businesswoman, whose production company Slaney turned a profit of €111,677 last year, said financial inequalities in Hollywood are “not fair”.

She said: “What are my feelings about women being paid less than men? It’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be the case anymore. We’re doing exactly the same job.”

“I feel like we’re very much part of a movement now with a film like Brooklyn (based on the novel by Colm Toibin) which has so many scenes in it that consist of female interaction and that only have women at the centre, being entertaining on screen. They’re smart, well-written, well-rounded characters. I hope that will help change things.”

“This financial inequality shouldn’t be the reality. It’s really not fair and there’s no justification for it.”

New York-born Saoirse who lives in Carlow also revealed she is thinking of returning to the Big Apple to study film.

She said both Ireland and New York feel like home to her in very real and different ways.

She explained: “I celebrate being Irish and I also really celebrate being born in the greatest city in the world.

“I think you can have different identities and you can take different things from the places you’ve grown up with. America has, over the past few years, become a huge part of who I am and a lot of my friends are over here.

“I’m going to move to New York next year and I can’t wait. I will always be Irish and I will always be very proud to be Irish and I will take that with me, wherever I go. We are like a nation of leavers but we always sort of come back . . . emotionally or physically, we always return eventually.

“I’ll fly the nest but Ireland will always be home and I’m very sure of that in myself.”

The thespian credits her success to her parents.

She said: “I don’t feel like I’ve ever had to hide any aspect of myself. I’m the kind of person — and maybe this is the way I work as well — where if something just doesn’t feel right, I have to sort that out. I can’t just sit on that at all because I get this huge knot in my stomach, no matter what it is — whether it’s needing to make a phone call to somebody or . . . if I feel like I’ve upset somebody and having to make sure I apologise, or whether it’s a job and feeling like a certain job isn’t right for me, I have to follow my instincts. It comes down to my parents and always being able to be open with them about how I feel.”

Interviews
Published
by Jess
on Sep 27, 2015

(Video) New ‘Brooklyn’ interview

A new interview from while Saoirse was doing press for ‘Brooklyn’ at TIFF has been posted on youtube and you can watch it below. She discussed her upcoming film, New York, family and more!

Brooklyn Interviews Videos
Published
by Jess
on Sep 27, 2015

Saoirse talks to Awards Circuit

Saoirse Ronan sat down with AwardsCircuit to discuss ‘Brooklyn’ while promoting the film at 2015 Toronto International Film Festival and you can read it below:

One of my highlights of TIFF this year was the opportunity to sit down with Saoirse Ronan to discuss her new film Brooklyn, as part of Fox Searchlight’s press junket for the film. Having seen the film a day earlier, I was eager to find out how she prepared for the role and the experience of making such a beautiful film. Below is an edited version of our conversation.

Shane Slater: Congratulations on such a beautiful film, it even made me feel nostalgic for Ireland! Was this a case where you knew from the start that you had something special here?

Saoirse Ronan: Yeh, I read the script about a year before we started to shoot the film. And from when I signed on, to when we actually made it a year later, I had moved out, left home and I had gone through that whole emotional journey that she goes through. So, I loved it to begin with and it was absolutely the right first Irish script for me to do. I had never done another Irish film before and this felt like the right one. But by the time we actually shot it, it meant so much more to me.

It’s interesting that you say that you felt that yearning as well. Because when we were making it and when I went to Ellis Island after we wrapped, I thought this is an Irish film, for Irish people, for Ireland. My mom came over for her birthday and I told her I really wanted to go to Ellis Island, to kind of round the film up. And I had only ever thought of it as a place where a lot of Irish people came in. And I went there, and for better or worse, the amount of Irish, English, Scots, Jewish, Germans, all these different people had been brought to this one place and had no idea what to expect. It’s so incredibly special because it binds everyone together and from that point onwards, I thought this story is actually for everyone. For anyone who ever left home, moved away to college, moved down the road, or left the country they grew up in. And it’s that sense of not knowing where you belong in this new part of your life, we’ve all gone through it. That’s what I went through when I moved to London and I basically relived it all over again when we did the film. So it was very overwhelming.

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Brooklyn Interviews
Published
by Jess
on Sep 20, 2015

(Video) Saoirse’s Interview with BTVRtv’s Arthur Kade

Saoirse Ronan sat down with Arthur Kade to discuss her upcoming film “Brooklyn”and you can watch it below:

Interviews Videos
Published
by Jess
on Sep 19, 2015

Saoirse talks to NOW about her Oscar buzz

Brooklyn officially hits theaters on November 6, and movie-goers are sure to be captivated by 21-year-old Saoirse’s portrayal of a young woman in fifties Ireland who is torn between her home there and the new life she established for herself in New York. When asked by Toronto’s NOW magazine about a likely second Oscar nod – her first came for Atonement in 2007 when she was only 13 – Saoirse said she’ll wait and see.

“When Atonement happened I was a kid, so I wasn’t really aware of all the Oscar talk, but it worked out and it was great. But I’ve also been on the other side, where there’s so much buzz before a film’s even made and then it doesn’t have that kind of success when it’s released. So I know how unpredictable these things can be. But listen, Jesus, it would be absolutely amazing for the film to get recognized. Even the fact that some people are talking about it in those terms is a dream. Whether it happens or not.”

Born in New York in 1994 to undocumented Irish parents, Paul and Monica Ronan returned to Co. Carlow Saoirse was three. Paul Ronan was a theater actor of note in New York, and featured in Brad Pitt’s 1992 IRA film The Devil’s Own.
It wasn’t easy for her folks, Saoirse said, and she credits them with giving her a sense of what’s real.

“They went over and didn’t have degrees or anything like that. They went over to work, to graft,” she says. “My dad did all sorts of jobs, construction and things like that. At literally at one point he actually shoveled s*** out of an elevator shaft at the Waldorf Hotel, which he only told me about recently.”

Her parents gave their only child many things, chief among them a U.S. passport. “In the states they are very strict when it comes to visas. My mom was adamant that I wouldn’t have to go through what they went through. My American passport is golden to me,” Saoirse says. Donald Trump take note!

Source: Irish Central

Brooklyn Interviews
Published
by Jess
on Sep 19, 2015