Saoirse Ronan
speaker
109 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Saoirse Ronan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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