Category: Press

Saoirse to appear on the Late Late Show

Saoirse is set to appear on the Late Late Show this Friday (November 14th, 2014)!

Irish actress Saoirse Ronan and comedian Brendan Grace will chat to Ryan Tubridy on this Friday’s Late Late Show.

Also this week The Late Late Show will launch its Toy Show Jumper Competition. A spokesperson for the show explained to RTÉ Ten that they are looking for a member of the public to knit a Christmas jumper for Ryan to wear on the Toy Show.

They said: “As with every year Ryan will wear a festive jumper on The Late Late Toy Show. Usually he buys one but this year he needs the public’s help.

“Their mission should they chose to accept – it is to knit Ryan a Toy Show Jumper! If the jumper committee approves it he’ll wear it on the Toy Show.”

If you would like to enter, send your finished jumper to The Late Late Toy Show Jumper, PO Box 170, Dublin 4. It needs to arrive no later than Friday November 21.

Don’t send anything that you are too attached to as The Late Late Show will not be able to send them back.

Source: RTÉ

Interviews

Published

by Jess

on Nov 13, 2014

Saoirse Ronan ‘absolutely extraordinary’ in Brooklyn lead role – author Colm Toibin

Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan has been described as “absolutely extraordinary” in her new role in Brooklyn by the man who penned the book.

The acclaimed actress (20) has finished filming on the movie based on the novel of the same name by award-winning Irish author Colm Toibin.

Co-starring Domhnall Gleeson, it tells the story of a young woman named Eilis who moves from a rural town in Ireland to the bright lights of Brooklyn as she tries to follow her dreams. Once in the US, Eilis is initially homesick, but soon settles down in the city and falls in love with an Italian plumber called Tony, who is played by Emory Cohen.

And having seen the first version of the movie, which saw Nick Hornby writing the screenplay, Toibin was left singing the praises of the Carlow native.

“It’s very, very emotional. It’s the first time I suppose she’s doing a part as a lead actress as an adult on her own and she’s absolutely extraordinary,” he said. “I thought, maybe this is for people who remember emigration but all the young people who came from the publishers and agency in London, they were all in tears of the choice she had to make. Was she going to stay in Ireland or was she going to go back to Brooklyn and the guy, the American actor Emory Cohen plays it as pure charm. He’ll do anything to win her.”

He also said there was wonderful chemistry between her and the ‘Stars Wars’ actor, who’s quickly becoming the toast of Hollywood and plays Saoirse’s love interest in the film.

“Domhnall Gleeson in Ireland plays it the other way around (to Cohen). He is just so sincere, so honest, so decent that he would mean pure stability and he sort of needs her and she can see that every word he says is true. So they’re playing the opposite ways against each other and she has to decide which way to go,” Toibin told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny.

The cast also includes Jim Broadbent as the village priest and Julie Waters as Ronan’s mum with the production shot in locations including Enniscorthy in Wexford and Dublin.

Set in 1950’s Ireland, the shoot then moved on to Montreal in Canada with the movie scheduled for release in early 2015 with Toibin saying the only thing left to do is add the music score to the film.

Author Toibin will shortly publish his eight novel, which is entitled Nora Webster.

(Source: Independent.ie)

Published

by Jess

on Oct 02, 2014

Saoirse for Wonderland Magazine

One of the youngest actresses to be nominated for an Oscar, it was clear from the outset that Saoirse Ronan was destined for big things, and that’s before you throw her actor father Paul Ronan into the mix. Earning the election at just 13 for her role in 2007’s Atonement, she went on to star alongside the likes of Susan Sarandon (in 2009’s The Lovely Bones) and Cate Blanchett (2011’s Hanna). Now, at just 20 years old, Ronan already has a reputation for role picking done right.

When we catch her jetlagged and cocooned in blankets on a sofa in her home in Ireland, Ronan is doing what any sensible girl would do: indulging in a 24-hour marathon of Homeland, her latest obsession. We talk through upcoming films Stockholm, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, dream director collaborations and why integrity is paramount.

Wonderland: Talk us through the films you have coming out.
Saoirse Ronan: At the start of the year I did Stockholm, Pennsylvania. It’s a tiny film written and directed by Nikole Beckwith. It was her first time directing and we did it in 19 days, on a million dollar budget. I’d never done anything like that before. It was interesting to see how somebody, especially a new filmmaker, could handle that kind of pressure. After that I had about a week off, before moving onto Brooklyn.

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Interviews Photo Gallery Photoshoots Press

Published

by Jess

on Sep 18, 2014

Saoirse was ‘a star in nappies’

Paul Ronan, Saoirse’s father, was at the Ray D’Arcy Show yesterday, and he briefly talked about his daughter and how people could tell from the beginning she was going to be a star.

“She had a blankey in one hand and a doll in the other and she would put them down for doing the Jean Butler stuff because she would be up on very, very tippy toes doing the same dance in the same way,” he said.

He also told how his daughter, who is famous for her Meryl Streep-style grasp of accents, started doing accents and voices even before she could talk properly.

Source: Irish Examiner

Press

Published

by Jess

on Apr 17, 2014

Five Favorite Films with Saoirse Ronan

Saoirse has recently talked to Rotten Tomatoes about five of her favorite films, her love for classic cinema, her appreciation for David Lynch, and her experience on the set of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Read the interview below:

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976; 98% Tomatometer)
[Taxi Driver is] a film that really kind of struck me on an emotional level and as somebody who works and can kind of appreciate how films are made. I remember when I saw Taxi Driver for the first time, and I saw the creativity and the imagination that went into the shots that Scorsese chose, and to really kind of capture a very particular kind of New York. I thought it was really wonderful. You know, you can watch certain films and there are certain things that will stick out for you. It can be a great character or a performance or an ensemble performance or whatever, but when everything seems to come into play, it’s always really impressive, I think, when every single cast member is very strong. So I felt like with this film, cinematically, it just kind of ticked all those boxes for me.

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Interviews Press The Grand Budapest Hotel

Published

by Jess

on Apr 12, 2014

Saoirse fits into Wes Anderson’s world

The Fairfax NZ News has published a new interview with Saoirse, in which she talks about “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and working with director Wes Anderson. Read it below:

“It’s a weird thing”, says Saoirse Ronan, that the first movie in which she used her Irish accent was set in a fictional Eastern European country. But that’s the world of Wes Anderson for you. Expect the unexpected, allow the familiar to emerge in an unpredictable way.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, the new feature from Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom), is a rich, funny and poignant comedy-adventure, set mostly in the 1930s, in the imaginary Republic of Zubrowka. Ronan, who starred in Sir Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, plays a resourceful young woman, Agatha, who works in a bakery. She becomes engaged to a young hotel employee and plays a crucial role in the righting of wrongs and the rescue of a treasured possession.

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Interviews Press The Grand Budapest Hotel

Published

by Jess

on Apr 11, 2014

Saoirse talks Muppets, Cake and Mexico

CraveOnline has just published a (very amusing) new interview in which Saoirse talks about her “Muppets Most Wanted” cameo, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, her skills and birthmarks. Read it below:

Whoops, I just outed Saoirse Ronan’s surprise cameo in Muppets Most Wanted… to Saoirse Ronan. You’d think she would have been aware of that, but although she shot an amusing little sequence where she ballet danced on “The Muppet Show” in Ireland, she didn’t know she’d made it into the finished film until I told her. She also psyched me out by saying she didn’t have a birthmark on her face in the shape of Mexico in her new film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and ladies and gentlemen, she’s a great actress. I really thought I was in hot water there for a second. I’m not sure how that’s going to come across in the transcribed interview below, but we’re cool. Hopefully she’ll invite me to her future Saoirse Ronan parties.

But her it is, my conversation with Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan about working with Wes Anderson on his latest movie, why it’s the only film she’s ever worked on that she wasn’t afraid would suck, what those fancy cakes tasted like, what I did wrong the one time I tried to ride a horse, her childhood fascination with Riverdance and her upcoming film How to Catch A Monster, written and directed by Ryan Gosling.

The Grand Budapest Hotel and Muppets Most Wanted are both in theaters now. See them.

CraveOnline: Is starring a Wes Anderson movie like putting a jaunty feather in your cap? Were you a fan of his before this?
Saoirse Ronan: [Laughs.] I was. I really was a huge fan of Wes’s. I had seen pretty much all of his films and it’s one of those things, I guess it’s like being in a Tarantino film or something, where when someone like that is sort of their own genre almost, and always uses the same people and has used the same crew for years. You never dare to dream that you’d be asked to be in one of those films, you know? So when I heard that he was interested in me being in this, I genuinely thought it was a joke and I didn’t quite believe that Wes would want me in his film. But it worked out and it was brilliant.

I think that the dream element of it went on from there, just getting your head around being in a Wes Anderson film and then suddenly you’re there. From the hotel that we stayed in to the food that we ate every night every night, actually being on set and being surrounded by a beautiful set that had been made, had built from scratch for us to play in, was amazing. It was really amazing, it was a kind of pinch yourself moment, I have to say.

Now that you’ve been in a Wes Anderson film are you going to poke him to be in every one from now on?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Weird, he hasn’t answered any of my ten e-mails that I’ve sent him in the last week, so I don’t know. Maybe he changed his e-mail or something like that. I’ll try to get in touch with him some other way. I’ll fly over to Paris if I have to.

No, I would, if he wanted me to be in another one of course I would, because I think the thing is, you never know how a film is going to turn out but I have to say it’s the only film I’ve ever been a part of where I could kind of tell from the [outset] and judging by the level of detail that he works in, I knew it was going to decent. You know what I mean? I knew it wasn’t going to be terrible. [Laughs.]

It would have been a massive, massive shock if it had turned out to be an absolute mess because there’s so much craft and planning put into the production of this film before it even began, how the story is going to be told and what kind of shots he’s going to do, and how long each shot will go on for, and how long the dialogue scenes should go on for… I’ve never worked with someone who’s been so meticulous about all that stuff before and managed to also bring humor to a scene, and make a scene that can make you cry at the same. He’s very, very technical and at the same time manages to have so much life in his films. I really don’t know how he does it. That was why the fear wasn’t there before the film came out as to whether it would be good or not, because he tends to take that with him for every film that he does.

I always loved his attention to detail, the way that he dresses his characters, gives them all a uniform. You have a very a particular birthmark in this movie. Did he know exactly…

What are you talking about?

Oh, excuse me.
I never noticed a birthmark.

[Whistles nonchalantly.]
You’re right, I do have a birthmark.

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Hanna How to Catch a Monster Interviews Press Stockholm Pennsylvania The Grand Budapest Hotel

Published

by Jess

on Apr 03, 2014

Saoirse’s Interview with Elle

Saoirse has recently talked to Elle Magazine about about choosing complex characters, her Bridesmaids birthday party plans, and her unbridled love of brogues. Read the interview below:

How would you define your style? How has your stylist Grace Moore helped it evolve?
You know about Grace! Oh, that’s so nice! She’s one of my best mates. If an Irish designer is good at what they do—and there are a few in particular: Simone Rocha is one who is doing so well at the moment, Tim Ryan is another great designer—I want to wear them. I think about what I wear. I also feel like this is what everyone says, but I wear a lot of casual stuff. I wear jeans mostly, and trousers. I found that I started to dress an awful lot like my mom, so I wear a lot of ’90s, long, floral dresses now, and a lot of print shirts and jeans. That’s what I’m most comfortable in. And brogues. [Kicks up a leg to show off her lace-up shoes] I have so many brogues! And I wear them whenever I can. If I could convert people to brogues, I’d be so happy.

When Wes Anderson sent Ralph Fiennes the script for ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, he told the actor, “Just read the script and tell me who you want to play.” He couldn’t do that with you—unless they considered you for Tilda Swinton’s character?
Listen, if there’s a character that has a birthmark in the shape of Mexico on her face, there’s no contest. It was always going to be Agatha for me. But I still couldn’t quite believe it when my agent called me and said that Wes Anderson wanted to send me the script to read.

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Interviews Press The Grand Budapest Hotel

Published

by Jess

on Mar 11, 2014