She’s a critically-acclaimed Hollywood actress, but it seems Carlow actress Saoirse Ronan hasn’t let rave reviews of her new movie Brooklyn go to her head. Rumours of an Oscar nod have been circulating ever since the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, but modest Saoirse isn’t thinking too far ahead.
Looking stunning in Chanel at the flick’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last night, the 21-year-old said she was taking the Oscars buzz with a “pinch of salt” – but it’s looking good for the starlet, who previously was nominated by the Academy for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for Atonement.
Brooklyn, directed by John Crowley, tells the story of a young woman named Eilis (Saoirse) who moves from a rural town in Ireland to the bright lights of Brooklyn as she tries to follow her dreams. It also stars Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Julie Waters and Jim Broadbent.
And it seems it was a role very close to home for Saoirse, who has admitted she found it extremely emotional as she was going through a similar experience while filming.
Telling Now Toronto that she heavily related with her character, she said: “By the time we made the film I’d essentially gone through Eilis’s journey.”
“Even talking about it I get very emotional. I was right in the middle of feeling a deep, deep homesickness, missing my own mom and figuring out where I belonged in between these two places.”
She added: “When you move out on your own, you go through an identity crisis. ‘Who am I when I’m a grown-up?’ It was raw for me to go through that, in life and in front of a camera.”
The majority of the movie – an adaptation of Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel Brooklyn – was shot in Ireland, including Colm’s hometown Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, and is set in the 1950s.
It recently emerged that Saoirse will be jetting into Dublin and Enniscorthy for two Irish premieres of her new film, described by Variety as “rich in history and full of emotion”.
