Saoirse Ronan, chatty as ever, has attended the Irish premiere of Nora Fingscheidt’s addiction drama The Outrun at the Lighthouse cinema in Dublin.
The Irish actor plays a recovering alcoholic who, returning to the Orkney Islands after a spell in rehabilitation, mends rifts with family and finds helpful new directions in life. Based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot, the film won raves on premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and persuaded Oscar pundits to ink Ronan in as the year’s first likely nominee for best actress. She is also a producer on the project.
Catching what might be the last warm evening of the year, the Lighthouse event must surely have been a more sedate affair than jamborees such as that earlier world premiere.
“This is very different to Sundance,” she told The Irish Times. “I was just saying that the Lighthouse is one of my favourite cinemas anywhere. So I’m so glad we’re able to take the film here today. I always like being able to come home and share whatever I’ve been working on.”
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Now resident in north London, often elsewhere on a shoot, she must find it difficult to stay connected with the old sod.
“I can connect with home in different ways,” Ronan, raised in Carlow and Dublin, explained. “It doesn’t have to always be through visits. It can be through the books that I’m reading or the movies that I watch – or the music I listen to. There’s are so many people from home who are over in the UK, and there’s a really strong community over there as well.”
This has been a busy year for Ronan. In April she celebrated her 30th birthday. Three months later, she and partner Jack Lowden, also a busy actor, married at a quiet ceremony in Edinburgh. At the start of October, Steve McQueen’s Blitz, in which she stars as mother searching for her son during the Luftwaffe’s attacks on London, will open the London Film Festival before a limited release in November.
What can we expect from that project? McQueen, director of Hunger and 12 Years a Slave, is a singular film-makers.
“It’s very different to The Outrun, It’s a beautiful classic Steve McQueen film,” she said. “It’s a story of war, told in a way that only Steve McQueen could. It’s got incredible scope. While also being very, very intimate and emotional.”
Ronan, dressed tonight in a complicated black dress, has been down the Oscar road before. Five years ago, she became the second youngest person to secure four nominations. Few are betting against a fifth for The Outrun (with a supporting nod also possible for Blitz). What advice would she have for younger actors embarking on awards season?
“Bring a friend whenever you can,” she says. “And bring flats! If you’re a girl ... or a boy.”
