Category: Projects

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.

Continue reading

Brooklyn Interviews

Published

by Jess

on Sep 20, 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

‘Brooklyn’ Release Date Moved Up

Following a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week, Fox Searchlight announced Brooklyn, the new film about about an Irish immigrant coming to 1950s New York City, will open in select theaters November 4. This marks a two-day bump up for the film’s release.

Saoirse Ronan plays Ellis Lacey, a young Irish woman who heads to America after World War II and falls in love with an Italian man (Emory Cohen) from Coney Island. As the romance heats up, Ellis’s past begins to surface and she must choose between her old home and newfound happiness.

Nick Hornby adapted the screenplay from on Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn, and John Crowley directs the period drama. The film premiered at Sundance in January.

Brooklyn

Published

by Jess

on Sep 18, 2015

(Video) Saoirse talks to Variety

Saoirse, Domhnall Gleeson and director John Crowley discuss the acclaimed period drama ‘Brooklyn’ at the Toronto Film Festival. Saoirse mentions she had already read the novel years before the script ever came to her, and when it did she found it so amazing that there were no changes to be made. Watch it below.

Brooklyn Videos

Published

by Jess

on Sep 17, 2015

‘Brooklyn’ TIFF Reviews

Now that ‘Brooklyn’ has premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, many reviews of the film have started to come out, most of them praising the production and the acting of not only Saoirse, but also her castmates. James Dempsey, from Newstalk, gathered several of those reviews into a single post, making it easier for us to share them with you. As he mentioned, reviews of the film have been overwhelmingly positive, with many critics singling out Saoirse as a frontrunner for a ‘Best Actress’ nod, to add to her 2007 nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for ‘Atonement’.

In The Telegraph, critic Tim Robey writes that in taking on the role of Eilis, Ronan produces “easily her most mature performance, and she steps up to the occasion with captivating sensitivity. The whole shape of Eilis’s life feels somehow up to the young actress playing her, which is exactly as it should be.”

The The New York Post review describes Ronan’s work as “an awards-calibre performance,” while Eye for Film applauded the Irish actress for giving her role the “space to breathe and transform from someone smart but timid into a more worldly decision-maker.”

On RogerEbert.com, critic Susan Wloszczyna enjoyed the film, though warned that its romantic plot means it “could easily become your grandmother’s favourite movie of the year.” But Ronan was singled out for lifting the movie up with her “ability to deploy her expressive features with aplomb while relaying her character’s inner journey.”

But The Mary Sue, a feminist pop culture blog, was glowing in its praise of the entire film, saying: “Along with Ronan’s lovely, contained performance (saying it is one of her best so far is saying a lot of an actress who has already been so good), and excellent support from the cast, the script is really remarkable and stands out as one of the very best of year.”

Brooklyn will be released in cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic on November 6.

Brooklyn Reviews

Published

by Jess

on Sep 17, 2015

Saoirse on ‘Brooklyn,’ Feminism, and Her Brush With New York’s Escaped Convicts

Here is a new interview of Saoirse at the Toronto Film Festival and she talks about ‘Brooklyn’, feminism and working in New York.

Ronan is renewing her Oscar buzz with Brooklyn, a story about an Irish immigrant in 1950s New York City written by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity,About a Boy).

While at the Toronto International Film Festival for Brooklyn’s premiere, ETonline sat down with the young star to discuss dating, feminism, and what happened while filming in the same town where two escaped killers were found.

ETonline: How are you? All talked out yet?

Saoirse Ronan: You know I’m doing OK. I do always get sick every time before I do a press junket though. It’s like I’m allergic to press or something.

Oh, thanks.

Yea, I’m allergic to you. Stay away from me!

Such a sweet part of Brooklyn was how Tony (Emory Cohen) courts your character, Eilis. Watching it, I thought, that’s just not ever going to happen to me–or my girlfriends–today. Continue reading

Brooklyn Interviews Loving Vincent The Seagull

Published

by Jess

on Sep 15, 2015

‘Brooklyn’ Interview for Indiewire (Contains Spoilers)

Indiewire spoke with Saoirse during the Toronto Film Festival about ‘Brooklyn’ and why it hits so close to home. The interview contains spoilers.

Although the film is billed as a romance — and it very much is — there are all these wonderful female relationships within it, too, from Eilis’ mother and sister to the girls in the boardinghouse. Was that something that was attractive for you?

Absolutely, I’m glad you mentioned it, because no one else has been asking me about it. I’ve been trying to get it in. It’s great, we need to see more films where there is female interaction and it’s classed as entertainment and it doesn’t have to resort to something sexual or a competition or whatever. I think one of the things that a lot of journalists and critics and people have seemed to pick up on is there is no cattiness. The girls are snappy in the boardinghouse, but you’re all kind of in it together, and we all have dinner together.

Really, for me, what I’ve experienced over the last couple of years is that the women in my life have been the ones who are helping me become the woman I will be one day, the kind of wisdom that they’ve passed on to me. Just little things, just small little things — my auntie Margaret, my mom, my auntie who is like ninety years old — all these incredible women in my life, they’re the ones who have been through the same things as me, fundamentally, and help me in what I’m doing. I think that’s a huge part, I think that’s the real heart of this actually, Eilis’ relationship with all these different women in her life, they’re really the ones that carry the story through.

By the time she gets to the end of the film, and she meets this young girl, she’s come full circle. She’s taken on the part that Eva [Birthistle] plays at the start. I think that’s so beautiful, and that’s so true. It happens in life, so often you don’t realize how you came full circle. You’re able to look back at things in retrospect and go, “Huh, I got through, and I’m able to pass this on to somebody else.” Continue reading

Brooklyn Interviews

Published

by Jess

on Sep 14, 2015

(Videos) Saoirse’s Interviews at TIFF Red Carpet

As we posted photos before, Saoirse and the cast from ‘Brooklyn’ attented the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival and they stopped by during the red carpet to say a few words about the movie. Watch the interviews below: