Ronan flies in to soar in Lady Bird . . .
SAoIRSe RoNAN is determined not to let the film world engulf her. ‘It’s very easy to make the industry your whole life and just stay in that bubble, but it’s not good for you to work and do nothing else,’ the 23-year-old told me. Ronan’s been acting for half her life, garnering the first of three oscar nominations aged 13 for Atonement, so she knows of what she speaks. ‘In order to have a perspective on life, you have to live it,’ she said. The Irish-American actress took herself off to New Zealand last year and travelled around the Asia-Pacific region, meeting up with friends. ‘I needed to do that,’ she sighed. When she returned from her trip, she went straight to work with director Josie Rourke, taking the lead role in Working Title’s Mary Queen of Scots. She was filming the historical drama in London when Lady Bird, a movie she’d made earlier with Greta Gerwig directing, had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, where critics fought over which superlative to best describe it. The guy from the New York Times simply called it ‘perfect’. The picture, written by Gerwig, is set in Sacramento, with Ronan playing a high school student called Christine who insists on being called Lady Bird. It’s a coming-of-age story that overlaps with a mother-daughter relationship tale and explores class, gender sexuality and a little thing called love. ‘Comingof-age films, especially the ones with teenage girls, seem to focus mostly on romance and are a little superficial, where I think this whole world has been fleshed out in Lady Bird,’ Ronan told me on the phone from Los Angeles.
Ronan notes that her character is ‘recognisably human, and even a bit unlikeable at times, but she has a lot to offer. All the highs and lows of what it is to be a teenager seem to be in this one young woman’. Ronan’s portrayal reels you in. I saw the film three times because I was fascinated by her sublime performance and the tiny details Gerwig had poured in to her screenplay, such as how Lady Bird’s often exasperated mother (a fabulous Laurie Metcalf) works double shifts at the hospital to make ends meet and how she’s tougher on her daughter than her soft-hearted husband. ‘Be the best version of yourself,’ the mother pleads.
Lady Bird — like Three Billboards outside ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water and, to some extent, The Post, which all have strong female lead roles — arrives at a time when, as Ronan put it, ‘girls are finding their voice in a way they haven’t before’.
She added: ‘even before #MeToo sexual allegations, people were hungry for stories led by women.’
She wondered whether Lady Bird would have elicited as much attention if it had opened at a different time.
In my view? Absolutely. The film would have won attention whenever it chose to open.
Ronan’s heading to London next weekend for the Baftas, and then back to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards on March 4, where Lady Bird has five nominations, including Best Picture.
For Best Actress, Ronan will be up against four powerful performances — Sally hawkins in The Shape of Water, Frances McDormand in Three Billboards, Margot Robbie in I, Tonya and Meryl Streep in The Post.
Gerwig is in the Best Director race — shamefully, it’s only the fifth time a woman has been nominated for director in the oscars’ 90-year history.
In June, Ronan can be seen in Dominic Cooke’s beautiful adaptation of Ian Mcewan’s on Chesil Beach, and in September, Mary Queen of Scots opens.
At some point, she quite fancies the idea of doing a movie musical, an idea prompted by singing audition scenes in Lady Bird. ‘It has to be in a film. I can’t sing on stage — I’m not Anne hathaway! Anyway, Broadway hasn’t called me up yet,’ she joked.