Saoirse featured in the Summer issue of Bullet Magazine, here’s a outtake from the shoot. Thanks to M for the heads up.

I’ve added 18 HQ photos from the Opening Night Of Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & TV Festival to the gallery.

IT WAS lights, camera, action in Dublin last night as actor Saoirse Ronan opened a festival to help young people learn the tricks of the film trade.

The 17-year-old Oscar nominee hit the red carpet at Cineworld in Parnell Street to launch the Coca-Cola Cinemagic International Film and Television Festival, a week of events aimed at inspiring young people to get involved in film. Featuring events for four- to 24-year-olds, participants can look forward to workshops in TV and film acting, presenting, animation, writing for the screen and film journalism.

Those giving masterclasses include MTV host Laura Whitmore, Fair City actor Rachel Kavanagh, TV presenters Nuala Carey and Karen Koster and film make-up artist Maria Moore. Speaking before the first screening of the festival, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules , the young Carlow actor who got her first break aged nine on RTÉ’s The Clinic said it was never too early to start learning about film.

“I started to work when I was a good bit younger and I would have loved to have been involved in a festival like this – and I still would. There is always something to learn about film. To go through workshops and things like that is terrific.”

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The actor, nominated for an Oscar for her role in Atonement and a Bafta for The Lovely Bones , encouraged those keen to follow in her footsteps to get involved in the festival.

“You’re not quite sure how you are going to just fall into it so get into something like this, get into workshops, go to film festivals and just watch good films,” she said.

Having finished filming her latest movie Violet & Daisy with actor James Gandolfini, Ronan said the movie is due out later this year. “It was great, I shot it in New York and I was born there so it’s like my second home, I love it there. It was a brilliant film to do.”

Speaking about the festival, chief executive of the Cinemagic charity Joan Burney Keatings described the festival as “cross-border, cross-community and cross-continental”.

“We give young people an insight into the industry. Not every child is academic at school and if you’re not academic it’s so hard to find out what you are good at. We give young people a platform to find out what it’s like to be an actor, a director, a cinematographer, a film journalist.”

Louis Maxwell (11) from Drumcondra, hovering behind the velvet rope to catch a glimpse of Ronan, said, “I’m interested in film. I want to be a director.”

Having signed up for an animation workshop on Monday, he said: “I want to learn how to make better storyboards and get better at drawing and do a cartoon and a film. I just think it’s interesting how you can use the camera to capture all those images.”

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Thanks to Jessica for passing on the pics. We now have 30 more photos from the Opening Of Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & TV Festival in the gallery.
EDIT: More added, including HQs.

Here are the photos of the Opening Of Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & TV Festival. Enjoy!

The Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy posted three photos with Saoirse on his twitter.

A special screening of Diary of a wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules will mark the start of the eight day Cinemagic Festival on Wed 11th May. The gala opening will be preceded by a family fun reception in Cineworld Cinemas, Parnell Street. A very special guest will be in attendance to officially open the Festival – Saoirse Ronan, who herself is a patron of Cinemagic.

The 4th Coca-Cola Cinemagic International Film & Television Festival for Young People offers a wealth of cinematic experiences from masterclasses with well known names and faces from the world of TV and film (including SurAnne Jones, Michael Hirst, Laura Whitmore, Rachel Kavanagh and lots more), screenings such as Rocky, Labyrinth, Stand By Me, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Warriors, workshops schools programmes and much more. Full programme details can be found at www.cinemagic.ie

Bookings for public screenings at Cineworld www.cineworld.ie /1520 880 444 under 18s & concessions €4 / adults €5

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Saoirse Ronan has revealed she will not be playing woodland elf Itaril in The Hobbit.

The Hanna star had been in talks to star in The Lord Of The Rings prequel, directed by Peter Jackson, who she worked with on The Lovely Bones, but has now signed up to star in The Host.

Saoirse revealed: “It’s probably not going to work out with The Hobbit unfortunately.

“Because I would have been working for about a year on it and there were other projects that I was very interested in, but Pete and [his producer wife] Fran have been very good about it and very understanding.

“I’ll have to just go back down to New Zealand for a holiday and hang out with the hobbits.”

Saoirse stars alongside Eric Banna, Cate Blanchett and Tom Hollander in Joe Wright’s new action film Hanna, about a teenage girl who has been raised as a trained assassin and escapes to track down the woman who killed her mother.

Despite growing up on film sets, the 17-year-old actress said she didn’t relate to Hanna’s isolated life, but her journey of self-discovery.

Saoirse said: “I don’t feel isolated on a film set. In a way you do because you don’t really mix with the outside world you’re just sort of working non-stop for a few months but you’ve got so many people around you.

“But one thing that I did find I identified with was the journey that she goes through. It’s very similar to what a teenager would go through around my age. I turned 16 when I made the film and I feel like her journey is very much about growing up and finally breaking away from home.”

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Thanks to Caro for the heads up.

SAOIRSE Ronan has found a movie career comes with some seriously cool benefits.

For a start, there’s going to the Oscars when you’re 13. There’s mingling with Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono at a ball in Manhattan. Best of all, there’s getting your much missed collie back.

The dog, Sassie, went AWOL in Dublin in 2007 when Ronan (whose new film, the action thriller Hanna, is out today) was filming in the US. Fortunately, she had been picked up and was being cared for by the Irish Blue Cross animal charity while they searched for her owner. Mentioning the missing Sassie during a radio interview while in the States helped to get the story out and the two were reunited. To say thanks, Ronan helped raise money for the charity. “It was great to give something back to them.”

Ronan’s latest screen incarnation is not, it’s fair to say, the shaggy dog-loving, charity-fundraising type. A teenage assassin trained by her ex-secret agent father, the unworldly Hanna is a cross between Jason Bourne and Little House on the Prairie’s Laura Ingalls. To convince as a teen who can kill with her bare hands or any implement to hand, Ronan went through intensive training. Months before shooting began she was in the gym every day building up strength and fitness. Then it was out to LA for six weeks to train with Jeff Imada, the fight choreographer who had also worked on two Bourne films.

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Eric Bana, who plays Hanna’s father, soon realised how successful the training regime had been. “I had to be careful in our fight-training scenes together because those fists come at a great rate and with real force. I had to be very cautious not to hurt her – and not get knocked out by her. I’ve worked with a lot of guys who are not as tough as Saoirse.”

Sitting cross-legged on a couch in a London hotel, Ronan looks about as threatening as one of the nearby cushions. With bright green nail varnish, red skinny jeans and a new, shorter hairstyle – “It was a little bit too long, a little bit too young” – she’s acquitting herself well in the part of an ordinary 17-year-old, albeit one with a movie career that’s proceeding very nicely.

Born in New York, where her actor father was working at the time, her career began after the family returned to Ireland and she appeared, aged nine, in a hospital drama on TV. After a false start to her film career with the straight-to-video I Could Never Be Your Woman, in which she appeared opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, Ronan announced her presence in the business in Academy Award-nominated style in Atonement. Starring alongside Scotland’s James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, Ronan played the girl whose rush to judgement has calamitous effects.

The director of Atonement was Joe Wright, who also helmed Hanna. He noticed big changes in her between the two gigs. “She was 12 when we made Atonement, she turned 16 during the shooting of Hanna. She’s evolved as an actress, is a lot more in control of her craft, and obviously has a much broader understanding of the world and a greater interest in it. But fundamentally, her talent comes from the same place – her extraordinary imagination.”

That ability to convince as anything from a scheming English girl in Atonement to an exotic assassin in Hanna, means many roles are open to her, says Wright. Asked to speculate where her career is heading, he says she has the ability to be as good as Meryl Streep. “She can really do anything.” (She has a Streepian flair for accents. In Atonement she was English, in Hanna she’s German. In person, her own accent is as Irish as soda bread.)

For now, the next Meryl Streep lists her favourite things as watching Coronation Street with her mum, walking Sassie in the countryside near her home in County Carlow – and Lady Gaga. “I can’t wait for her video to come out. She’s a true artist.” Her musical education, Lady Gaga apart, has been steered by her parents and her uncle Joe. “He’s got brilliant taste in music. He’s a bit of a hippy.” Her latest discovery is Bob Dylan, whose Highway 61 Revisited she visited on a flight to New Zealand.

Though her own singing is confined to the shower – “My shampoo thinks I’m wonderful” – being in a band appeals. “I don’t know whether I’d be good enough to sing but I’ve always liked the idea of being in a band. In a way [singing] is like performing a very emotional scene. You get all the frustration, anger, anything you have inside you, you can just let it out for a few minutes.”

She had a chance to mingle with music A-listers recently at the Met Ball in New York. Besides McCartney and Ono there was Mick Jagger, Madonna, Beyonce and enough models, actors and assorted others to keep magazine picture editors in a state of delirium from now until Christmas. “I went to the Oscars when I was younger, but I’ve never seen so many famous people in one place from so many different parts of showbusiness. It was amazing. The red carpet was mad.”

Besides her dream of being in a band, she’s pondering university, to study history of art, film or philosophy. She’s not worried that she’d stand out from the student crowd. “I’m not as famous as Emma Watson,” she says, referring to the Harry Potter star who went to university in the US. “She’s one of the most famous people in the world and to do something like that, she obviously really cares about her education. But I think I’d be fine. If it was somewhere like the States I’d imagine I wouldn’t be recognised as much. Everyone I’ve talked to about it says it’s such a good experience, not something you should miss out on if you get the opportunity.”

Ronan has been home schooled by a tutor since leaving primary school. When she travels, tutors go too. Talk of university and blending into the crowd leads me to wonder if she feels she has missed out anything, yearns for a more boring life. A daft question to ask a teenager who has just been to the Met Ball and has travelled to more countries than Thomas Cook, but someone has to do it.

“Not really,” she says. “I go home to Ireland when I’ve finished working. The same people are there, I live in the same place. People change, the situation has changed, but I’m going back to normality. It’s all normal, it’s my life.”

When we speak she’s still to sign up for The Hobbit, which would find her working again with The Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson, who directed her in The Lovely Bones. If they’re quick, the casting directors of Ronan’s favourite soap might land a coup.

“A cameo in Coronation Street!” she laughs when it’s suggested. “That would be amazing.” But then, remembering her age, adds: “Everyone always goes to the pub, so maybe I’d go somewhere different.”

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