ACTRESS Saoirse Ronan plans to keep her love life under wraps.

The Carlow teenager says that while she doesn’t mind dealing with fame, she plans to keep her love life private once she begins dating.

Talented Saoirse is no stranger to the media spotlight thanks to the success of her movies Atonement, Hanna, and The Lovely Bones, but although she admits she likes posing with fans for pictures and speaking to the media, Saoirse says her personal life will always be kept separate to her life as a famous actress.

Speaking to the Herald, the Hollywood star said she will be keeping family issues and personal romances behind closed doors.

“My personal life is private and the thing for me is that people know me for the films that I’m in, more so than who I am. But at the same time, I’m not going to completely put up a barrier. I get that people are interested in who I am and I think it’s nice to know who a person is, I can understand it.

“But I certainly wouldn’t be giving away my family secrets or anything. The love life seems to be such a fascination for the media now, too. If someone has done enough interesting things then you shouldn’t need to know about that. And I don’t think it’s that interesting, to be honest,” she explained.

Meanwhile, Saoirse (17) is currently working on her next movie, a vampire flick called Byzantium, which is currently being filmed in Ireland and directed by Neil Jordan. The talented star says she is happy to be at home for Christmas after a hectic few years travelling around the world.

And the actress says she loves going shopping in Dublin because she doesn’t get followed around by paparazzi. “I don’t get loads of attention. People will recognise me but they will just be like, ‘ah yeah’.”

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EDIT: Screencaps have been added to the gallery.

We sit down with star Saoirse Ronan as she talks about her new thriller “Hanna”.

We caught up with actress Saoirse Ronan, who voices Arrietty in the English version.

What did you know about Arrietty when you signed up? Were you a Studio Ghibli fan?
Well I knew that it was based on The Borrowers. I used to read different versions of it growing up so I knew it was a story I loved and it was kind of ‘different’ and quirky. Probably the most exciting thing though was the fact that it was a Japanese animation, not simply a cartoon but one from the East. I’ve grown up with different [Japanese] animated shows over the years so to actually be involved in something like that was great. I had seen Spirited Away and My Neighbour Tororo as well. Spirited Away in particular I found amazing. The Japanese style is so different from ours and it’s quite innocent as well. They’re magical and otherworldly.

Ghibli films like to have a nice message. Arrietty has quite a strong ecological one. What is the film about for you?
For me it is actually about the relationship between her and the boy. It’s special because they live in two separate worlds. For a different being who is superior to her, and ultimately more powerful, to help her and her family survive is actually quite a strong message, I think. You could tie up the situation they’re in, which is her people struggling to survive, striving all the time to have a better life, with so many different situations today all over the world.

Your last film Hanna was a hugely physical role. What’s it like then having to go into a studio and do voice work?
I absolutely love going into the studio and just using my voice. That was one of the reasons I wanted to do Arrietty, for the absolute pleasure of being able to focus just on your voice and nothing else. It’s really great. We did an awful lot of it for The Lovely Bones.

I imagine it can be a little painstaking matching it to the animation though.
There were certain lines in Arrietty that when I watched it, I thought ‘that was a bummer to get’. I mean it’s easier because they do the ‘fish mouth’ – up and down, up and down – but it was difficult because it hadn’t been made around my voice like other animations would be. It is tricky.

So since Hanna you’re a bona fide action girl.
Am I?

Absolutely. Are we going to see you kicking ass more often from now on?
Well, I do that in my daily life anyway! I really loved doing it but it does take an awful lot out of you, and because you spend so much time doing a lot of physical work and not dealing with dialogue it’s nice to go back to that. It’s a great way to focus and physically train before shooting a film.

You’re next film coming out is Violet and Daisy. It sounds quite similar, being about two teenage assassins…
Well they’re teenage hit-girls. I was worried it would be repetitive but Violet and Daisy is set in New York City and it’s about two best friends who live in their own little bubble. They want to get a dress that their teen pop idol has just brought out so they go on a job to kill James Gandolfini’s character, and Daisy ends up having a relationship with him. So it’s completely different.

You can watch Studio Ghibli’s finest in a special season at the Barbican running until the end of July. Arrietty will hit UK cinemas for general release from 29 July 2011.

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She’s the Oscar-nominated star of Atonement, whom director Peter Jackson calls “amazing on screen”. But when we meet, I’m given an early reminder that Saoirse Ronan (it’s pronounced “Sir-sha”, by the way) is still only 17. I’ve just told her that I’ve seen the final Harry Potter film. “I can’t believe it’s the last one,” she squeals, flushed with excitement, her blue eyes widening. “I’ve basically grown up with Harry Potter, as so many kids my age have. It’s kind of a part of my life. I’ll go see it no matter what.”

Five years ago, she auditioned for the role of Harry’s fellow Hogwarts pupil Luna Lovegood (eventually won by fellow Irish actress Evanna Lynch). “I was too young – but at the time I thought, ‘I’d love to be in Harry Potter.’ When I was younger, I used to think they had the best job in the world.” But now it’s different. Potter is over – and it’s Ronan who is in the enviable position. With directors clamouring to work with her, she also doesn’t have to deal with hordes of screaming fans like her Potter peers.

Rather than mania, Ronan seems to inspire loyalty wherever she lands. “Saoirse is the most focused and dedicated actor I’ve ever met in my life,” says Joe Wright, who directed her in his film of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and in this year’s teenage assassin tale Hanna. “She drives herself harder than anyone else ever could or would.”

Stanley Tucci, her co-star in Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, in which she played the murdered teen Susie Salmon, notes, “She handles herself as well as any seasoned actor. I wouldn’t even be able to finish a sentence at her age. She’s a real actress. Bottom line.”

She does not look particularly adolescent; her blonde hair is rich, her skin snow-white, and her figure slender and willow-like. There’s something of Cate Blanchett about her – both in terms of appearance and artistic selection. Her latest role is actually her first animation voiceover – and another example of her ability to align herself with classy material. Arrietty is the new film from Studio Ghibli, the Japanese company behind Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Arrietty is a charming adaptation of The Borrowers, the 1952 Mary Norton novel about a family of inch-high people living beneath the floorboards, previously filmed as a live-action movie in 1997 with John Goodman starring. “I loved the idea of tiny people living in our world and having a completely different life,” says Ronan, “and having to struggle in different ways.” Ronan voices the title role in Arrietty – a 14-year-old girl who is desperate to go “borrowing” for the first time, and filch sugar cubes and other tiny objects from the house above.

“She is a bit nosy, isn’t she?” laughs Ronan. “But in a nice way. I think she’s very curious and inquisitive. She’s gutsy. I think she’s very excited by the idea of growing up and finally being able to help her dad with her livelihood. And when she goes borrowing for the first time with him, she’s kind of in awe of his skill and how wonderful she thinks it all is.” It’s all too tempting to see Ronan as similarly independent, though still wanting to follow in the footsteps of her father.

Paul Ronan is an actor, whose credits include Veronica Guerin and Ballykissangel. “My Dad and I always read the scripts,” she beams. “Most of the time, he’ll read it first – to see if there’s anything in it that’s a bit explicit. Then I’ll read it afterwards and we’ll discuss it.” Ronan was born in New York, in the Bronx, after her father and mother, Monica, moved there when things got tight in Ireland. He’d worked in construction and as a barman, she as a nanny. So the story goes, he brought her as a babe-in-arms on the set of The Devil’s Own – and she met Brad Pitt.

Eventually, her family moved back to Ardattin, in County Carlow, where Ronan – an only child – spent the rest of her childhood, quite happily it seems. “I’ve always lived in the environment where I’ve been allowed to express myself,” she says.

Along the way, she was home-schooled – because, she told one interviewer, “teachers [were] giving me a hard time. Teachers and students.” Having started her career in the Irish TV drama The Clinic when she was nine, it was the usual thing – local fame equals petty jealousy.

While her first major film role was in the little-seen Michelle Pfeiffer comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, it was Atonement that switched her on to acting. “That’s when I thought, ‘This is something that I don’t think I can really let go off now.’” At 11, she was nominated for a Bafta, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. For the Academy Awards, she had to fly in from New Zealand, where she was filming The Lovely Bones. “I remember Pete Jackson told me beforehand, ‘When you go on to the red carpet, because it’s so hectic, take a moment to breathe and take it all in and remember it.’ And I did. I think if you just float on through, it can be very easy to pass by it.”

Such is Ronan’s sky-high confidence, she has already turned down a reunion with Jackson on The Hobbit, his long-awaited prequel to The Lord of the Rings. Does she have any regrets? She giggles for a second. “I mean, yeah. I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t do it. I really am. Any excuse for me to go back to New Zealand, and work with those people I’d take. But there are other projects as well that I’ve had to consider… and to do that for over a year, it wouldn’t have left me time to do anything else.”

Having completed Violet and Daisy (a second teen hit-girl story after Hanna), she’s now trying to figure her next move. Up for grabs is a third union with Joe Wright, for his Tolstoy adaptation Anna Karenina, or a first hook-up with Neil Jordan, for his female vampire tale Byzantium. Then there’s The Host, Andrew Niccol’s proposed adaptation of the Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s novel about benevolent parasites that invade Earth.

Ronan seems a little worried, as if her next film will really define her transition to adult roles. “At the age I’m at, it’s a tricky time to try and figure out which is the best project for me to do,” she says, earnestly. “I’ve never really felt like I was a child actor. Just an actor who happened to be quite young.”

‘Arrietty’ opens in cinemas on 29 July. ‘Hanna’ is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 29 August.

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The seventeen-year-old actress and star of Lovely Bones, Hanna and the new animation Arrietty explains why Quentin Tarantino is like no one else in the film business.

There’s no one out there like Quentin Tarantino. His films have a signature look, and they never just stick to the same kind of story.

In Inglourious Basterds, and really in all of his films, the scenes go on for a long time and you don’t get that on film a lot anymore. You don’t notice the length though because the dialogue has been written so well it feels like a conversation.

I haven’t worked with him but I’d love to. I’ve talked to people who have and they all say he’s mad and that it’s fantastic fun working with him. They worked on Inglourious Basterds for months and months – I can imagine working with Tarantino is like nothing else.

Music is really important in all of his movies and he puts so much time and effort into picking out what music he wants – it can go from ‘Jungle Boogie’ to Chinese music in the same moment. There are so many things that are so strong in his films – the editing, the music, the dialogue, the bizarre acting style. He completely understands what he wants and he knows his characters extremely well. He tends to work with the same actors every now and again, so they can read each other. There’s always such an ensemble feeling in his films too. In Kill Bill for example, of course Uma Thurman is the star but it really feels like it’s a group effort. He’s often in his own films, which I think is great: he’s so different looking he’s got an amazing face.

Pulp Fiction was the first film of his that I saw and it really blew my mind. It’s a long movie, and quite complicated; it jumps back and forth like a lot of his films do and so much happens in it. It feels like you’re watching a comic book on screen. Each of his films are a collection of styles – which I think is great.

Even now he’s a big inspiration to so many people, and he will be in years to come.

Arrietty is out in cinemas from July 29

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Filmbase are celebrating their 25th anniversary this week with festivities taking place on Friday June 24th and Saturday June 25th. Events include a public interview with Oscar nominated actress Saoirse Ronan which will take place on June 25th. Saoirse is one of Ireland’s most successful actresses having played starring roles in Joe Wright’s ‘Hanna’, ‘Atonement’ and Peter Weir’s ‘The Way Back’.

Celebrations kick off at Filmbase’s Temple Bar location on Friday 24th June at 7pm with a special ‘Road to the Oscars’ panel session. The panel including Juanita Wilson (The Door, As If I Am Not There), Steph Green (New Boy) and Nicky Phelan (Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty). The panel will discuss how they got to the Oscars with their work following a screening of the Oscar-nominated short films.

Other events at the Filmbase 25th celebration include a Birthday Party, sponsored by Jameson, at Filmbase from 6pm-8pm on June 25th and screenings of short films, filmmakers speaking in the café in Filmbase, animation demos and top tricks and demo for the DSLR camera throughout the Saturday.

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