Saoirse Ronan speaks on her new film ‘Brooklyn’
– By Cate Marquis, Staff Writer for The Current –
Actress Saoirse Ronan was born in New York but her parents returned to their native Ireland with her when she was three. So “Brooklyn,” a film about a young Irish woman, Eilis, who moves to America in the 1950s and then later returns to Ireland, seemed a perfect fit. Now 20 years old, Ronan has appeared in several films in teen or child roles, including “Atonement,” her first major film when she was 12.
Ronan spoke recently by phone with college journalists. Here is a portion of that interview, edited for length and clarity.
The Current: “I was just wondering, how emotionally invested do you think you were in the character of Eilis since you and her both come from New York and Ireland?”
Saoirse Ronan: “Initially that was the real personal connection for me… the fact that my mom and dad had made that trip over from Ireland to New York and had gotten married in City Hall…and I was born there. Yes, these two places really very much made up who I am, but by the time we actually made the film, which was maybe a year or so after I had signed on, I had moved away from [my parents’] home and was living in London, and was going through home sickness myself and still trying to figure out where I stood in the grown-up world. It’s a very daunting feeling, I think, and I was right in the middle of that while we were making the film. So it meant that every kind of stage that we see Eilis reaching and overcoming, I was going through myself. It was very scary because of that, because there was sort of nowhere to hide, but by the same token, once you actually get through something like that, there’s nothing more gratifying.”
TC: “This is your first role playing an adult character, in this coming-of-age story where she is adapting to a new country. Could you speak about the role and the character, and how you feel about moving beyond juvenile roles?”
SR: “I mean it’s interesting because even when I was a kid, I never was involved in children’s films apart from maybe one or two. [The films] were always quite grown up, and so when I got to the age of about 18 and 19, I was really ready to play someone older, and certainly by the time I reached 20. It’s a tricky time because there’s a lot of execs and writers and studios and all the rest that can’t really pinpoint exactly what a journey would be for a young woman between the ages of 18 and 21, so it’s a tricky time to get the role that is interesting and still kind of matches your maturity and where you’re at in your own life. When “Brooklyn” came along, it was perfect, and it was like a bloody guardian angel or something coming down and kind of going, “Okay, you’re ready now.” I think just going through that experience, I felt quite changed afterward, but I was very much ready to take that step.”
TC: “I really enjoyed the movie, and you did such a great job of capturing Eilis’s quiet strength and emotions in a way that’s very believable and avoids being sentimental. I was wondering how the director, John Crowley, helped you bring her character to life in such an authentic way.”
SR: “John, who has done an awful lot of theater in the past, kind of grew up with theater, was incredibly tuned in to every single emotional beat that needs to be [hit]. We didn’t really deviate from the script at all. We stuck to it word-for-word pretty much because it was such a terrific script, anyway. Ultimately, when you’ve got a script that’s so well written and you’ve got a great director who knows where he wants to take it emotionally from scene to scene, it’s a great guideline to have. But I think with John, what he would do was he would start sort of emotionally in one place, and then he would bring you somewhere completely different. He would always try and find this great balance that meant that everyone’s performance is natural and quite nuanced, and as you say, it’s sort of delicate, it’s not over the top or sentimental or anything like that. I think it’s because he knew every single step that this woman took was important, and it was integral for the story and for her progression. And so you knew that you were in safe hands because dramatically, he knew where he needed it to go even when we were shooting.”
TC: “Was it difficult having [romantic] chemistry with two different actors, Domhnall Gleeson as Jim and Emory Cohen as Tony? How did you approach making the audience believe in your character, feeling for both Tony in American and Jim in Ireland?”
SR: “I think they’re both really great suitors, to be honest, and this is something that is sort of a real life situation. I’m sure most of us have gone through it in one way or another. We start out with Tony who’s so adoring and open and passionate about [her] and lovely and lovable for how he feels for Eilis, and I loved that. To have Emory be as magic as he is on screen made that very easy, but then to have Domhnall on the other side of it, he really had the toughest job out of all of us, to try to match us with a dramatically smaller amount of scenes. I mean, he really only had like four scenes to kind of reach the same level as Tony. I think because he’s so sincere and dignified and kind of starts to open up with Eilis in a way that he probably hasn’t with anyone else—I don’t know; I could appreciate that I guess.”
“I could appreciate both of their lovely qualities, and ultimately these two men are representing two different worlds and two different lives that she could have, and so in the bigger picture, that’s what it was really about. I could completely justify her staying in Ireland over New York even though New York ultimately was the braver and probably better choice for her, but I could understand why she was on the fence about it I guess or why she was feeling that pull.”
TC: “Eilis experiences some conflict regarding her future when she returns to Ireland. What do you think was the ultimate deciding factor in her decision?”
SR: “Being honest, I mean we gradually start to say when she goes back home to Ireland that even though she has evolved into the young woman who has her own life, has her own job, is married, even though nobody knows that at home, decisions are slowly starting to be made for her again. Well, actually as soon as she comes home, her mother automatically starts to take ownership over plans with her friends and the job that she’s going to take up and things like that. And so she can see … that’s starting to happen but doesn’t necessarily do anything about it, because she’s home and she’s kind of falling back into the sort of fantasy, I guess a little bit of what it would be like if she were back home. Really, it’s when she has that scene with Miss Kelly near the end of the film where ….Miss Kelly [tries to] bring her back down to earth or remind her of where she really came from, she had to rise up and she had to stand up to this woman who had kicked her down for so long…”
TC: “When people go to see this movie what do you want them to take away from it?”
SR: “I think honestly, I mean John has put it really well whenever anyone’s asked, just to be kind to people. I think the real—if there’s any message with this film, apart from the personal connections that everyone has seemed to have to us in one way or another, the heart of this movie is that she gets on well in life and she grows, and she grows into this amazing young woman because the people around her have been kind to her and they’ve helped her and they’ve shared advice and wisdom and their experience. And because of that, she has been able to, as I said, ultimately stand up and announce who she is and realize that she needs to make a choice. She wouldn’t have been able to do that at the start of the film, she wasn’t there yet. It’s really—it’s the people around her that helped her to come out of herself in order for her to get the confidence and have that security in who she is.”
TC: “ ‘Brooklyn’ seems to draw a lot of its power and charm from the fact that it is a period piece and there’s a genuine disconnect, both cultural and communicative, between the two countries, do you believe that this story could effectively work in modern time in a world that’s reliant on internet, Skype, and social media?
SR: “Yes, actually I think it would be really interesting to see a similar journey be taken now, because we’ve all gone through it. We’ve all left home, gone to college, moved away to a different country or a different state, and regardless of how much technology enables us to communicate with the people we love, whether it’s over the phone or visually, obviously that does make it a little bit more bearable, but that feeling that you get when you move away and you realize that once you’ve moved away you can never kind of go back to how it was and is universal and is similar to anyone else who’s gone through it before, it’s similar. It’s the same feeling, it hasn’t really changed. And so I think it would be really interesting in spite of the amount of communication we have now to see someone go through that and show that in spite of the amount of technology we have now, it’s still just as hard and it’s still just as heartbreaking for people.”
TC: “You mentioned that through the process of the movie, you yourself changed in terms of where you were, like moving out to London and everything, so what kind of insights did you take away in terms of who you wanted to be? Like Eilis is in the movie, how far across the ocean do you want to place yourself?”
SR: “I think coming through ‘Brooklyn,’ the thing that it taught me or the lesson that it taught me is that everyone goes through this, everyone has this feeling, and it won’t always feel like this and it will get easier. I think for me, Brooklyn, going through it, reading the script, and even watching the film now and talking about it is the equivalent to somebody either you know well or maybe not at all just sitting down with you and being able to perfectly articulate exactly how you feel. I’m sure we’ve all had that where you’re trying to figure out why you feel a certain why and maybe you’re confused by it, and someone is able to pinpoint exactly what that is for. It kind of knocks you back, and it can be overwhelming and really emotional that somebody else understands and somebody else has been through exactly the same thing. And so Brooklyn gave me the safety, I guess, in knowing that I wasn’t the only one who was going through this and it would get easier.”
(c) The Current 2015
