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STAR ON HER THIRD ACADEMY NOMINATION
from that and learned so much. “She was just so ready to do this. It kind of felt like this was always something she was supposed to do. “I was a fan of hers anyway, but to watch her deliver it to the world has been even better.” Gerwig, 34, is only the fifth woman director to be nominated for an Oscar. Ronan hopes this year will mark a watershed for female filmmakers.
“There has to be,” she said. “I think with Lady Bird and Wonder Woman (which was directed by Patty Jenkins), which was such a big blockbuster, there will be a change.
“The conversation is too big now to go away. And first and foremost, the best material has to be the stuff that gets made.
“But in order to make it as diverse as possible, women, for example, need to be able to get a meeting with an executive and go, ‘Here’s my piece of work – now decide what you will, whether you think it’s good or not’. There needs to be the option, at least.” Lady Bird is Ronan’s third Oscar nomination. She’s also up for the best actress award at the Baftas on Sunday. The star was 13 when she played Briony Tallis in Atonement, a role that bagged her the first nomination.
The second came for her 2016 portrayal of an Irish woman who emigrates to New York in the film Brooklyn.
Lady Bird is a quasi-autobiographical telling of Gerwig’s upbringing in Sacremento. The stories, by and about women, feel particularly important to Ronan, given the current climate in Hollywood.
The movie got a rapturous reception at film festivals last year and has a near perfect score on review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes following its release in the US.
Ronan added: “The type of films that have come out over the last year are a reflection on the massive changes that we’ve all gone through in the last couple of years, politically and otherwise.
“The likes of Brexit and Trump have really affected all of us and our creativity. “I think people were hungry for a film like this. When it came along, the reaction we got to it was sort of like, ‘Why weren’t we doing this all along?’
“It’s because, really, women wouldn’t have got in the door in the past.
“Going, ‘I want to make this film about a teenage girl’ wouldn’t have been plausible.
“But now? This feels like the right time.” ● Lady Bird is released in selected UK cinemas tomorrow and nationwide on February 23.
The likes of Brexit and Trump have affected all of us and our creativity SAOIRSE RONAN