Saoirse Ronan is reflecting on one of her hardest productions ever: 2015’s “Brooklyn.”
The period piece was directed by John Crowley. Former child star Ronan credited the feature for being her first production as an “adult,” but that meant it also came with more than a few growing pains.
“I wanted to leave home but I was very homesick,” Ronan told the Los Angeles Times. “I found it really hard, but I didn’t want to go back — it was literally ‘Brooklyn.’ I hadn’t had anyone push me in the way [John] did before. He treated me like an adult actor and that took me a minute and left me with a bit of a bruise.”
Of course, the plot of “Brooklyn” seemed to mirror Ronan’s personal ordeal. Based on Colm Toibin’s novel of the same name, the film centers on Eilis Lacey (Ronan) as she emigrates from Ireland to New York City in the 1950s. Ronan went on to receive an Oscar nomination for her performance.
“Brooklyn” director Crowley, whose upcoming feature “We Live in Time” is already receiving festival buzz, added that Ronan gave a “level of emotional vulnerability […] on set daily” for the role.
“It was like watching somebody going out on a tightrope,” Crowley said. “And she made it look easy. Of course, it’s not easy. It cost her. But I think she felt that she was truthfully expressing something of herself in the role and that’s why it yielded so beautifully in her hands.”
He added of “The Outrun” actress, “She could have had a great career in silent movies. She just has an ability to express emotion, if you turn the sound down, in a way that is magical to me still.”
Ronan is next appearing in Steve McQueen’s WWII drama “Blitz,” which focuses on a mother-son relationship with an “interesting perspective,” as she teased.
Ronan previously told IndieWire that she “related to everything” about her “Brooklyn” character.
“Every single saying, every aspect of what her journey is, I was in the middle of it at that point in my life,” Ronan said. “Ultimately, I think that it was a good thing, but at the time, it was quite overwhelming. It’s like being faced with a mirror that’s like an inch from your face and you can’t look away. But it was really terrific.”
She added, “That’s the kind of un-Hollywood thing about this film. [Director] John said it to me in rehearsals before we started, and it will always stick with me, and it’s ultimately how this film is about a girl having such a journey that, at the end, she’s a woman, and she’s been faced with two choices and it’s up to her to make that choice for herself. And not one choice or the other is going to be better or worse. […] I hope that when women go and see it, that they kind of feel a bit empowered by that and go, ‘Right, I’ve been through that, too, and I’m proud that I was able to go through that and make that decision myself.’”
