Saoirse Ronan Speaks On Her New Film BROOKLYN, Ireland, NY And Coming-of-Age

Photo by Kerry Brown. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

By Cate Marquis

BROOKLYN is a film about a young Irish woman, Eilis, who moves to America in the 1950s and then returns to Ireland after a family tragedy. It seemed a perfect role for actress Saoirse Ronan (pronounced “Sear-sha”), who was born in New York but when she was three, her parents took her to their native Ireland when they returned there.  Now 20 years old, Ronan first gained wide notice for her role in ATONEMENT when she was 12.

Ronan spoke recently about BROOKLYN by phone in a conference call. Here is a portion of that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Movie Geeks:  “How does your own experience coming to the country compare and influence the movie in turn?”

Saoirse Ronan:  “When you’ve had your own personal experience of leaving home yourself and it is as emotional as it can be, you can’t help but allow that to sort of influence how you play someone, I guess, and how much meaning it holds for you.  It influenced everything I did in the film, the fact that I had gone through it myself.”

MG:   “I was wondering, do you think the movie is more so a testament of how universal love can be or rather how conducive 1950s America is as a melting pot to connect an Italian and an Irish through the environment that Brooklyn affords?”

SR:   “I think it’s the former.  It depends on the person I think, but we’re dealing with two people here, especially Eilis, who kind of naturally is quite an open person.  I think when she goes over to New York, I know I’ve even felt this going over to New York even though I was born there, but I am very, very Irish, and we are kind of a nation that’s really celebrated in the city, and so I think she has this confidence.  She’s kind of seen as exotic by him you know, and he’s fascinated by her because she’s different.  I do think there’s a fascination on his end that allows her to have this sort of confidence.  Yes, I think their love kind of rises about any cultural differences or anything like that.  As I said before, what brings her back ultimately of course, is waking up and realizing that she’s got this man at home back in New York that really loves her. But it’s also, because of the time, she couldn’t divorce, she had made a vow to this man, and that was where she needed to be.”

MG:  “In Colm Toibin novels, ‘Brooklyn’ included, they’re often said to focus heavily on character detail and on gestures more so than the story itself, did you ever find yourself referring to the novel more than the script when you were trying to portray Eilis?”

SR:   “No, I didn’t.  I usually don’t.  I had read the book previously maybe about two years before I knew about the film and before the film was properly being developed, but I’ve always found—I mean I’ve also been very, very lucky that I’ve had great scripts that are very well written already, and it’s kind of all the reference and all the text that I need.  But Nick was able to adapt this very colorful, rich piece of literature for film, and any question, I guess, that we had, John was there for that.”

MG:   “Eilis arguably undergoes both a physical and an emotional transformation in this movie because she becomes confident, she becomes older, she’s more comfortable, she’s stronger because of what she’s been through, and you do a really great job in the movie of manifesting this physically, so I was wondering what preparation that you took in preparing for this role and sort of manifesting her physicality, and also does it differ from the preparation that you’ve taken in before other roles?”

SR:   “When I did a film called ‘Atonement’ a few years ago when I was about 12, the director on that, one of the first things that we worked on apart from the accent, was the way a character would walk.  And so that’s always been quite important for me, and I think from that it naturally meant that a character’s emotional face really reflected and fed into their physicality as well, and it kind of naturally starts to happen.  Yes, I guess it was just one of those things that sort of naturally, as you say, manifested through the course of the script, but the more confident emotionally the character was, I guess I just kind of naturally stood in a different way.”

“I think when a character has purpose as well, when a young woman has purpose and she knows where she’s going, your walk is going to always reflect that.  And so I think it was just one of those things that really kind of happened naturally.  I could feel that like when we brought Eilis back home to Ireland in the second half of the film, she was more in control of herself.  She, as you said, has been through quite a life experience since she’s been away, has gone through fear and grief and love, and has taken on so much responsibility for herself. And so, just like it would in real life, that just kind of naturally reflects or feeds into the way you hold yourself, I guess.”

MG:   “I was wondering what it felt like filming so close to where you grew up?  Well, I know some of the scenes were shot in Ireland, so what was it like filming so close?”

SR:   “It was weird.  It was really weird.  We actually shot in Enniscorthy where the book and the film were set, and Colm Toibin, the author, is actually from there.  To go there, which is like 25 minutes away from where I grew up in Carlow, and it’s a place that we used to go to the cinema when the film that we wanted to see in our one-screen cinema in Carlow wasn’t on, we would go to Enniscorthy, so I knew the faces there, they were quite familiar to me and there were a lot of extras who would be in the dance hall or at the church, and would come up to me and say like, do you remember me from years ago?  We played basketball together or were at sports together.  These were people that I wouldn’t have known personally, but kind of met in passing. “

“To have a life that even I’m not part of anymore, that was very much my childhood colliding with work which had always been kept so separate when I was kid was bizarre and amazing.  It was really amazing.  It was great to be surrounded by really kind of Irish characters.  This wasn’t imitated in any way.  We were surrounded by the Irish spirit, so I think it really helped the film.”

Director John Crowley and Saoirse Ronan on the set of Brooklyn. Photo by Kerry Brown. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

MG:   “You’ve done a very eclectic mix of films and now developing into more mature roles, what do you look for when you’re considering a script and what attracted you to this script specifically?”

SR:   “I think one of the really important things for me and it always has been is that I’m always doing something different.  The project that I’m looking at for the future needs to be different to whatever I’ve done in the past.  Obviously, you can’t always make a dramatic change, but I feel like you need to do that as much as possible in order to grow and learn more and just being able to really adapt to different types of personalities that you’re playing.”

“What I’ve found more as I’ve gotten older and where I’m at personally kind of at this stage now in my life, it’s important for me to play someone who maturity-wise is at the same kind of place.  It’s always important that they’re not just the crutch to somebody else’s character, that they’re interesting and well written and intelligently written.  I would never want to play someone that’s just the girl next door or something like that, I’ve never found that interesting.  I’ve always kind of thought when I look at the likes of Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton that so many of the roles that they’ve taken on could have easily been a man, and it could’ve been a male character because it’s not necessarily gender specific, it’s very much just about this person that they’re playing, and so that’s kind of what I’d like to emulate too.”

MG:   “Something that I thought was very interesting about the immigrant story and that of your parents is that unlike earlier generations, it was easier travel-wise to go back to the old country, so earlier generations really had to make this kind of choice; they didn’t have the opportunity to go back.  Could you talk about that aspect of the story and whether your parents’ decision colored how you played the character?

SR:   “My mom and dad went over in the ’80s, they took a plane. I mean even for them, they were illegal when they were here initially, so they couldn’t go back for about three years to Ireland, and even that was like a huge, huge thing.  You can imagine how much of a sacrifice it would have been for someone in the ’50s and even earlier to physically get on a boat and watch their country disappear into the distance.  I can’t imagine how terrifying that would be, and it’s so kind of finite.  There’s such finality to it that I’d imagine was really kind of terrifying and heartbreaking.”

“Yes, I think the fact that—just since I had made the film I talked to Mom specifically more so about how it felt to leave, and she told me about, because my dad had gone over ahead of time, when she went to the airport and her sister and her father brought her to the airport, and my Auntie Margaret even says now, like I was Rose.  She bought her her plane ticket, and it was the hardest thing she ever had to do, but she knew it was the right thing for my mom, and that was heartbreaking for them.  Regardless of the fact that she was getting on a plane, she would’ve been there in a few hours, and if she really needed to she could’ve come back ultimately, to actually essentially give up your younger sibling was a huge thing to do, and to talk to them about it definitely helps me to feel the weight of that situation.”

MG:   “One thing that made Eilish’s story as an immigrant to America in the 1950s different from the story of immigrants of earlier generations is that she can change her mind and go back to Ireland.  And after she’s been in New York for some time, she does go back to Ireland for family reasons, for a visit, but once there, she considers whether to stay or go back. That’s part of the emotional crux of the film, not just the romance. And that’s a choice immigrants of earlier generations didn’t have an option to make –  but in the 1950s, they could.

SR:   “Yes, I mean if you were lucky.  But if that family tragedy hadn’t of happened, she probably wouldn’t have come back.  She maybe would’ve come back once more, but that was something that of course, brought her back home, but she wouldn’t necessarily have done that otherwise.  But yes, you’re right.  I mean in earlier cases, the majority of people that were going over there where going over there to work because there was no work at home and they had no money.  As we said in the film, even in the ’50s, the men who went over 40, 50 years before, who didn’t kind of achieve the American dream and didn’t make an awful lot of money and didn’t become rich or whatever else they were told they were going to be maybe when they went over, [well they] were stuck there.  Generations before, of course, that was even more so, that kind of feeling of very much sticking to that one place.  Yes, it was a huge sacrifice, and they were incredibly brave to do what they did, to give everything up at home.”

BROOKLYN is playing in theaters now.