Saoirse Ronan
Appearances
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
sidestepping the reality that, of course, everything affects everyone and it stays with you. Of course it does. But the fact that there was this levity from the very beginning, I think really helped me. And I was really, really lucky that so lucky. And I realise that now more than ever, that the filmmakers that I was working with in those first few years really promoted fun.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
You know, Pete Jackson, Peter Weir, Amy Heckerling, who discovered me essentially. She was the first director that I worked with on a movie. And they were just great people to be around. And, you know, you have to remember about certainly about filmmakers is that they're big kids. They get into this because they want to stay in that world of make-believe.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
They want to take something that's real and build something else from it. So in a lot of ways, it was such an incredible environment to grow up in where youth and Innocence is sort of encouraged in a way and play is never forgotten about. And I think that's really shaped who I am as an actor now.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Not as much as I'd like, to be honest. I think that kids need to be protected far more than they are. If a kid has a great chaperone, then that's amazing. But I think that the relationship between director and young performer really needs to be given the time that it deserves. I think it's incredibly important that
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
that a director is a solid influence on their young performer, that they're not mercurial, that they're not unpredictable around them in the way that you wouldn't want a parent to be with a child. It's so important that they're someone that the kid can rely on, that they always bring an element of fun to the set for them. I always think about Spielberg.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I feel like it seems like Steven Spielberg was really, really incredible with kids, with like Drew when they were on E.T. and stuff. And I think that we cannot forget, no matter how impressive a child can be at acting for the first time. they're still a kid and their innocence has to be protected.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I think the real danger though comes, which has changed, it's gotten worse since I was a kid, with the promotion and the self-promotion that comes when a movie that a child is in comes out or a TV show. I think there's too much that's expected of kids now. I think social media hasn't helped that at all. But, you know, I've watched kids over the years since I started out who are like
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
networking essentially in Hollywood and are allowed to go to parties until late at night with adults that they don't know. And yeah, I think it's a dangerous environment for a kid to be in if they don't have the right people around them.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
It was a rite of passage, really. They left school when they were 15, 16. They needed to get to work. There was more work in the UK and America than there was at home. And I think a couple of their friends had gone over ahead of them, had gotten a bit of work and had something lined up for dad. So he went over and then Mam followed a couple of months later.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And yeah, and they just they lived there. They experienced life outside of Ireland. And, you know, it was really hard. They didn't have anything. They didn't have money. They didn't. You know, she had me and of course couldn't afford health insurance. And so it was actually, I think it was like, it was a Catholic church charity or something that helped her a lot when she had me.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
The point being that she sort of really had to rely on other sources in order to live. But it was tough. You know, my dad started out in construction. He eventually became a bartender and was discovered by a bunch of actors from the Irish Rep In the pub that he worked in, he auditioned for a play. He got the part. He became an actor, a theatre actor.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Mam was a cleaner and then eventually nannied for different families and took me to work with her. And I think at a certain point... My mom in particular realized that this just wasn't the life that she wanted me to have. And, you know, if you're if you want to live comfortably in New York and I would say London as well, you need money. And they just didn't have that.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So they went home where they had, you know, a proper support system. And it was your dad's acting career that brought you back to Ireland. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it was. So it was a combination of them just needing more support, I suppose, from their family and them wanting me to, you know, have a garden and fresh air to grow up with and in. But also, yeah.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
It was a time where the Irish film industry was sort of starting to boom a little bit because of filmmakers like Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan and just a lot of American filmmakers who were becoming really fascinated with Ireland, either because of their heritage or Irish playwrights that they'd grown up reading. Yeah. And yeah, and so work took him home. So we went back.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yes, I do. I remember, what was Dad doing? It was some film about the Troubles, of course. There was lots of explosions. We definitely went through a phase of that in Ireland. And so he was, I can't remember what the movie was, but I think that's where I got my sort of mild tinnitus from. I still have a ringing in my ears and I think it's from this film. There was an explosion that happened.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I was in a pram and there was an explosion that happened that they hadn't prepared anyone for. And dad ran for me and put his hands over my ears to protect them from this massive explosion that had gone off. And he always said, I just don't know if I got to you in time because I've got a ringing in my ears right now, even as I speak to you. And he's got really bad tinnitus because of it.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So that's my first memory of being on a film set. And I remember even like I was young, maybe I wasn't in a pram, but I was like, I don't know, I was like five or something. And even then I remember loving the atmosphere of a film set. I just loved, I loved how cool everyone was and how much fun everyone seemed to be having.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Absolutely. Up until that point, I hadn't really played someone who was properly from Ireland. I'd used my own accent in the Grand Budapest Hotel, but I'd never helped to bring to life a sort of stereotypical Irish experience, which millions and millions of us had. have gone through for a very, very long time.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So to be able to explore that, I suppose, on screen was absolutely part of the reason why I wanted to do it. Although I think what I hadn't anticipated was actually how overwhelming the experience would be because I had only recently just left home and I'd moved from Ireland to London, assuming that London's just a bigger Dublin. It's the same. I'll be fine. And it's not. And I wasn't.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And I went through a period of just realising that I actually didn't know that many people here. And I felt quite lonely and disconnected from what I knew and from my roots and who I felt I was back then. And yeah, and so to make Brooklyn sort of at the very beginning of that experience in my life was kind of wild.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yeah, absolutely. I think it did. But I think that goes back even further for me because I was born in the place that I didn't grow up in. So I was born in the Bronx. I was there till I was three. I always sounded Irish. I was only really surrounded by Irish people when I was there anyway.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And then with two Dublin parents, I moved to the countryside and so still didn't really fit in and was reminded of that quite a bit. And so I never really felt like I fully belonged anywhere. And I still don't really. I think there's parts of me that belong in different places. And I suppose the older I've gotten and the more sort of people who have become a part of my life,
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
bubble um they are my home you know my partner is my home like wherever we are that's that will feel the most like home that it that anywhere can really um so it's not site specific um for a long time I think I got really bogged down by that but Yeah, I've kind of always felt that way.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
But actually, what's really great about being on the road from so young is that you can create a home for yourself anywhere and you know what you need to feel safe and to feel comforted. So, yeah, I think any actor, any filmmaker, any musician, I'm sure, they become experts in setting up camp anywhere, really. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not dissimilar to being bilingual. Like, you know, you're so open to everything. And so if you're exposed to lots of different sounds, then I guess your ear sort of remains open to that and your brain is tuned into that. And from quite an early age.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So, yeah, I think, you know, I was as I said, I was mainly around a lot of Irish people in New York, but of course, heard a lot of American accents, too, and was also brought up on American TV like a lot of kids are. And, you know, a lot of my friends nowadays will say that their kids, whether they're in London or Dublin or Glasgow or London,
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
New Zealand, you know, were so influenced by America that actually a lot of their kids are kind of brilliant at doing the American accent just through like Dora the Explorer or whatever, whatever they watch now, Paw Patrol. So, yeah, so I guess I was no different.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, as important as accents have always been for me, I'm actually really, really keen to just use my own now because And I remember Andrew Scott saying that, that, you know, he spent so long as we all do as a lot of Irish and.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Celts do in particular and Northern English do, where we have to be able to do accents because there just aren't enough parts for people who sound the way we sound. So you have to be able to talk like this or have an American accent, which is, you know, frustrating. But he said that for a long time he really... in sounding different from himself and that that's sort of part of what acting is.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And I felt exactly the same way. And then at a certain point in your life, you kind of think, oh, I'm actually not that bad and I'm not completely uninteresting. And I'd quite like to explore acting without having to think about the accent. So I've kind of gone through a period over the last few years where I've really enjoyed using my own voice.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I want to go where culture is, like New York, or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire, where writers live in the woods.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Because you wouldn't let me practice enough.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I think it was the first time that I had been exposed to an addiction story that didn't feel like it was all doom and gloom. It allowed me to get to know the whole person. Amy Liptrot wasn't defining herself by her addiction to alcohol, but was acknowledging that it played a huge part in her life, in the destruction of her life for a long time.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yeah, I mean, I guess the really interesting thing at the time was that I couldn't relate to that at all with my mam. But at the time, I was 22, I think, and I needed my mam desperately and really couldn't relate to that too much.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
But I think my internal struggle as a young person at that point and feeling very chaotic in my head and very hormonal and very out of control is what really fed that performance. And conversations that I had with Greta, of course, really informed that as well. But also Laurie and I just kind of built something that was very... It was very personal for us.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
It was our relationship that we built and we got on so well off screen and we just had so much fun doing those scenes together because we, I don't know, I feel like sometimes when you've got distance from a relationship like that, or you're not as in it in real life, you can enjoy it so much more and kind of have clarity on it. So, yeah, so it was just, it was just really, it was just so fun.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I just loved working with her.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Put simply, what I love and admire most about Greta is that she loves actors. She is not afraid of actors. She's not intimidated by them. She knows how to handle them. She gives them support and structure, but also allows them to just play and be free and And it's quite incredible how many directors can't seem to do that. She enjoys being on set so much.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
She's such a positive influence on all of us. And she has the most impeccable taste. And that girl will never stop working to make something better. She pays attention to every little detail without it feeling clinical at all. She actually put a line into Lady Bird where I think the nun in the movie says that the greatest form of love is to pay attention. Something like that. Yes.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
It's the most beautiful line. And that is what Greta does. She pays attention. I've never met someone who is more genuinely interested by human nature and people. And I've never worked with anyone like her. And she always makes me better.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I was really drawn to the fact that we would follow a young woman as she struggles with alcoholism. I think that usually when you think of that as a story, you would imagine probably a man, you know, middle-aged or a woman who's going through a divorce or she's lost her family or, you know, there's a sort of domestic sort of element to it. And the fact that we were going to follow someone who,
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
as bad as it sounds on paper, shouldn't have this addiction. And yet does just reminds us of how this is something that can affect everyone.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
It is a particular topic that is very personal to me it's an addiction that I haven't struggled with myself but I've watched people very close to me struggle with it and some of them have seen the light eventually and others have not and that's incredibly painful and I think as someone on the receiving end of that
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And there's a lot of anger and resentment that is born out of that experience because you're not going through it yourself. You don't understand or I certainly didn't understand really how addiction works. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say, but I think unless you actually sit down to examine the effect that.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
substance is having on your brain, you don't really take the time to unpick it because you're so hurt by it and you're so hurt that it has been chosen over you. And so I think I spent a lot of my life carrying that around with me. But it was, yeah, it was scary. It was scary to hone in on this. It just brought up a lot of pain for me, I suppose.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
What was that like? I love to swim in cold water. I've been doing that since I was a kid. So that's like my happy place. That was not a challenge at all. If anything, it was a challenge to pretend that it was freezing cold, like so cold that I just wouldn't get in. Am I a sheep farmer? I am not. And I was not before this experience.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
However, since then, I have gotten in touch with every farmer I know in Ireland and Scotland and been like, let me know when lambing season starts, guys, because I'm ready. It was the most insane experience I've ever had on a film and just in life. It's so intense. And we actually shot... the lambing sequence before we started principal photography.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So it was probably about five months prior to us starting the production because lambing season in the Orkney Islands starts in like sort of April time. It's a little bit later than the mainland. And then I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And I was sort of coached by different farmers that I met in Orkney. And they were incredible. But the really interesting and really humbling thing about it was that sheep don't sort of stick to a schedule necessarily. And so we had to bend our shooting schedule to nature. I would get ready at like 4am. We'd go into the shed and we would just wait and the camera would be ready to go.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And sometimes you would go in and there wouldn't be a ewe that would go into labour that day. Other times they would. And as soon as they did, Kyle, our farming consultant, was just like, OK, go get her. Go tackle that you to the ground. And he would coach me through it from off camera. And it was just the most amazing experience.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So that really sort of set the tone for the rest of the movie, I think.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yeah, he was doing research and came across this incredible photograph of this little black boy on a train station platform on his own. And he had a little cap on and his little suitcase on. And I think, I'm assuming, a tag around his neck. And Steve was, of course, very intrigued by him and wanted to know what his story was. And so that's where the inspiration for Blitz came from.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yeah, I mean, that's really the reason why I wanted to get involved. I, of course, wanted to make a film with Steve McQueen. such a huge fan of his and I've wanted to work with him for years. I, of course, knew that it was going to be a sort of fresh take on a World War II British epic, but I didn't know exactly how.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And so when he started to explain to me that it would follow a mixed race little boy who he'd found already at that stage, I think Elliot had already been cast in And that it would really focus on the people left behind, essentially, the ones who had to keep society going, which was the women, children and older folk. It just piqued my interest straight away.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And knowing that my sort of role that I would play would be in honouring the mother-child relationship and was just something that I couldn't really pass up. I'm incredibly close to my own mother and we've spent a lot of time together where it was just me and her.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
So that dynamic is something that I've always wanted to bring to life on screen and getting to do it with this sort of backdrop was just incredibly exciting.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
I guess I just wanted him to have the kind of experiences that I had when I was younger. I think I was very, very lucky that probably partly because I had my mother with me to protect me, but also because the people I was working with were so positive and supportive. And, you know, people like...
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Stanley Tucci, James McAvoy, Juno Temple, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel Weisz, you know, Guy Pearce, like they made me feel safe. They respected me as a fellow actor, but they were sensitive to the fact that this was my first time. This was new for me and it's special. And I think they obviously remembered that from from when they had started.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
And so I wanted Elliot to have the same experience, really.
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
Yeah, I mean, I think as Stanley said, especially when the subject matter was so dire, I think I was really lucky, I'm sure just through the people that I was brought up with and maybe the fact that my dad is an actor as well. And just the way they are as people that like I didn't ever take it too seriously. I was very, very focused and very disciplined. But I...
Fresh Air
Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
knew that i needed to leave it at the door and i think that's the really incredible kind of uh the the capability that children have in general and and that's sort of i suppose what steve wanted to highlight in blitz like kids of course it's going to affect them in some way but they have this ability to just float through life to a certain extent that's not of course um
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Saoirse Ronan's performance as a precocious young girl in the war drama Atonement got her her first Oscar nomination. She was only 13 at the time, and three other nominations were to follow. One for the 2015 film Brooklyn, about a young Irish woman in the 1950s, torn between her new life in the U.S. and her homeland.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
She got two nominations for the film she made with Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird in 2017 and Little Women in 2019. Her other movies include The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lovely Bones, and Mary, Queen of Scots. This fall, she has two films in theaters.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
In the movie Blitz by the director Steve McQueen, Ronan plays a mother living in London with her young son and elderly father, all trying to survive the German bombing campaigns. During World War II. And in the film The Outrun, she plays a young woman whose life is derailed because of her addiction to alcohol. It's based on the best-selling memoir by Amy Liptrott.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Ronan plays Rona, a dramatized version of Liptrott, who's a graduate student living in London when her drinking takes over. She tries different things to get sober, going to rehab, moving back to Orkney, Scotland to help her bipolar dad tend to his goat farm, and then to an even more remote island off the coast of Scotland, where she spends most of her time alone working on nature conservation.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Here's a scene from the outrun. Rona is waking up after a bad night of drinking. She doesn't even remember what she's done, but both she and her boyfriend, played by Papa Esiadu, are both hurt and bandaged up. He's had enough and wants to break up. What did I do last night?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Saoirse Ronan, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. I know you read the book The Outrun and loved it so much that you wanted to make it into a movie, produce it, and play the main character. What was it about the book that you found so compelling?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
I think it was the first time that I had been exposed to an addiction story that didn't feel like it was all doom and gloom. It allowed me to get to know the whole person. Amy Liptrot wasn't defining herself by her addiction to alcohol, but was acknowledging that it played a huge part in her life. in the destruction of her life for a long time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
I was really drawn to the fact that we would follow a young woman as she struggles with alcoholism. I think that usually when you think of that as a story, you would imagine Probably a man, you know, middle aged or a woman who's going through a divorce or she's lost her family or, you know, there's there's a sort of domestic sort of element to it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And the fact that we were going to follow someone who. as bad as it sounds on paper, shouldn't have this addiction. And yet does just reminds us of how this is something that can affect everyone.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Now, you said that there were parts of this story of dealing with it was scary for you because it was too private, something that you hadn't completely explored before. And I'm not sure if you mean like in the film or in your life or both. What was so scary to you about it?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
It is a particular topic that is very personal to me. It's an addiction that I haven't struggled with myself, but I've watched people very close to me struggle with it. And some of them have seen the light eventually and others have not. And that's incredibly painful. And I think as someone on the receiving end of that...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And there's a lot of anger and resentment that is born out of that experience because you're not going through it yourself. You don't understand or I certainly didn't understand really how addiction works. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say, but I think unless you actually sit down to examine the effect that addiction
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
substance is having on your brain, you don't really take the time to unpick it because you're so hurt by it and you're so hurt that it has been chosen over you. And so I think I spent a lot of my life carrying that around with me. But it was, yeah, it was scary. It was scary to hone in on this. It just brought up a lot of pain for me, I suppose.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
In this movie, you do some interesting things. You know, your character grew up on a sheep farm. And at one point, your character puts her hands in a sheep to get to help birth a lamb. And at another point, you know, you're in what seems like completely freezing water. Yeah. And the character is connecting with seals who are swimming there and it kind of shocks her into her body.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
What was that like? I love to swim in cold water. I've been doing that since I was a kid. So that's like my happy place. That was not a challenge at all. If anything, it was a challenge to pretend that it was freezing cold, like so cold that I just wouldn't get in. So I'm that person. Am I a sheep farmer? I am not. And I was not before this experience.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
However, since then, I have gotten in touch with every farmer I know in Ireland and Scotland and been like, let me know when lambing season starts, guys, because I'm ready. It was the most insane experience I've ever had on sheep.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
on a film and just in life it's so intense and we actually shot the lambing sequence before we started principal photography so it was probably about five months prior to us starting the production because lambing season in the Orkney Islands starts in like
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
sort of April time it's a little bit later than the mainland and then I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb out and I did that seven times and I was sort of coached by different farmers that I met and And they were incredible.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
But the really interesting and really humbling thing about it was that sheep don't sort of stick to a schedule necessarily. And so we had to bend our shooting schedule to nature. I would get ready at like 4 a.m. We'd go into the shed and we would just wait and the camera would be ready to go. And sometimes you would go in and there wouldn't be a you that would go into labor that day.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Other times they would. And as soon as they did, Kyle, our farming consultant, was just like, OK, go get her. Go tackle that you to the ground. And he would coach me through it from off camera. And it was just the most amazing experience. So that really sort of set the tone for the rest of the movie, I think.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Now, the other movie that you have coming out this fall is Blitz by the director Steve McQueen. It's about a mother during Germany's bombing attacks on London in World War II. She's worried about her son's safety, so she follows the government's recommendation, which is to send all children to the countryside to avoid the bombing campaigns.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Now, I read that a photo that Steve McQueen saw while researching another project ended up inspiring this film. Is that your understanding of how it came about?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Yeah, he was doing research and came across this incredible photograph of this little black boy on a train station platform on his own. And he had a little cap on and his little suitcase and... And I think I'm assuming a tag around his neck. And Steve was, of course, very intrigued by him and wanted to know what his story was. And so that's where the inspiration for Blitz came from.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And what drew you to the film? I'll say that it's a different kind of World War II film that focuses on those left in London during the bombing attacks.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Yeah, I mean that's really the reason why I wanted to get involved. I of course wanted to make a film with Steve McQueen and I'm such a huge fan of his and I've wanted to work with him for years. I, of course, knew that it was going to be a sort of fresh take on a World War II British epic, but I didn't know exactly how.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And so when he started to explain to me that it would follow a mixed race little boy who he'd found already at that stage, I think Elliot had already been cast in And that it would really focus on the people left behind, essentially, the ones who had to keep society going, which was the women, children and older folk. It just piqued my interest straight away.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And knowing that my sort of role that I would play would be in honouring the mother-child relationship and was just something that I couldn't really pass up. I'm incredibly close to my own mother and we've spent a lot of time together where it was just me and her.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
So that dynamic is something that I've always wanted to bring to life on screen and getting to do it with this sort of backdrop was just incredibly exciting.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
You were born in New York City in the Bronx. Your parents had moved to the US from Ireland in the 1980s. Why did they come to New York?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
It was a rite of passage, really. They left school when they were 15, 16. They needed to get to work. There was more work in the UK and America than there was at home. And I think a couple of their friends had gone over ahead of them, had gotten a bit of work and had something lined up for dad. So he went over and then Mam followed a couple of months later.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And yeah, and they just, they lived there, they experienced life outside of Ireland. And, you know, it was really hard. They didn't have... have anything they didn't have money they you know she had me and of course couldn't afford health insurance and so it was actually I think it was like it was a Catholic church charity or something that helped her a lot when she had me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
The point being that she sort of really had to rely on other sources in order to live. But it was tough, you know, my dad started out in construction He eventually became a bartender and was discovered by a bunch of actors from the Irish Rep in the pub that he worked in. He auditioned for a play. He got the part. He became an actor, a theatre actor.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Mam was a cleaner and then eventually nannied for different families and took me to work with her. And I think at a certain point, My mom in particular realized that this just wasn't the life that she wanted me to have. And, you know, if you're if you want to live comfortably in New York and I would say London as well, you need money. And they just didn't have that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
So they went home where they had, you know, a proper support system. And was your dad's acting career that brought you back to Ireland? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it was. So it was a combination of them just needing more support, I suppose, from their family and them wanting me to, you know, have a garden and fresh air to grow up with and in. But also it
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
it was a time where the Irish film industry was sort of starting to boom a little bit because of filmmakers like Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan and just a lot of American filmmakers who were becoming really fascinated with Ireland, either because of their heritage or Irish playwrights that they'd grown up reading. And yeah, and so work took him home. So we went back.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Now, you're very good at doing accents. You know, you're Scottish in The Outrun, English in Blitz. You do a specific regional accent in Brooklyn. And, of course, you do an American accent in the films Lady Bird and Little Women. I was wondering if you think about... That living in the U.S. as a baby helped you with your American accent.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
So it just makes me think about language at that early age and kind of like how weird and malleable it could be.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not dissimilar to being bilingual. Like, you know, you're so open to everything. And so if you're exposed to lots of different sounds, then I guess your ear sort of remains open to that and your brain is tuned into that from quite an early age. So
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
Yeah, I think, you know, I was, as I said, I was mainly around a lot of Irish people in New York, but of course heard a lot of American accents too and was also brought up on American TV like a lot of kids are. And, you know, a lot of my friends nowadays will say that their kids, whether they're in London or Dublin or Glasgow or London,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
New Zealand, you know, were so influenced by America that actually a lot of their kids are kind of brilliant at doing the American accent just through like Dora the Explorer or whatever, whatever they watch now, Paw Patrol. So, yeah, so I guess I was no different.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, as important as accents have always been for me, I'm actually really, really keen to just use my own now.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And I remember Andrew Scott saying that, that he spent so long, as we all do, as a lot of Irish and Celts do in particular and Northern English do, where we have to be able to do accents because there just aren't enough parts for people who sound the way we sound. So you have to be able to talk like this or have an American accent, which is, you know, frustrating.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
But he said that for a long time he... He really indulged in sounding different from himself and that's sort of part of what acting is. And I felt exactly the same way. And then at a certain point in your life, you kind of think... Oh, I'm actually not that bad and I'm not completely uninteresting. And I'd quite like to explore acting without having to think about the accent.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
So I've kind of gone through a period over the last few years where I've really enjoyed using my own. Well, Saoirse Ronan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was lovely.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
And I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and I had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times.