Torontosun.com released an interview with two new shoots of Saoirse and Rose.

There’s nothing like a road trip to cement a new friendship.

So it was with the Oscar-nominated teen Saoirse Ronan and New Zealand actress Rose McIver, 22, who visited Toronto last week on the latest whistle-stop of their tour to promote The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s book about a murdered 14-year-old who looks upon the aftermath of her life from a place called “the in-between.”

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The two play sisters — albeit ones separated by death. Ronan is Susie Salmon, the protagonist, who watches as her “kid sister” Lindsey (McIver) ages from 11 to 19, experiencing first kisses and other milestones denied to her by Mr. Harvey, the psychotic child-killer next door (Stanley Tucci).

In real life, McIver and Ronan became inseparable friends, who touch and play with each other’s hair almost by habit. This despite the fact that they share few scenes in this vail of tears.

“It was funny that I got along so well with Rosie, considering we didn’t do that much together,” says Ronan, who burst onto the scene with a best-supporting actress Oscar nomination for Atonement.” After location filming in Pennsylvania, “she came and visited us on the set in New Zealand and we used to hang out a lot.

“Travelling around like this together is a lot of fun.”

“Although,” McIver adds, “on a visit like this, there’s not much time to do much more than what we’re doing now.”

“But we’re on to L.A. next,” Ronan says excitedly. “And I’m sure we’ll go to (the trendy shopping district) The Grove or something. The last time we were there somebody recognized us and took pictures. It was really weird.”

Ronan admits her life changed radically after the Oscars. “It does open doors, it was incredible and unexpected. But things are even more busy now after The Lovely Bones, even more so than during the Oscars. I have a movie I’m about to start (reportedly the movie Hanna, in which she plays an East European teen trained as an assassin), but I can’t talk about it because it’s not completely signed, sealed and delivered.”

And with an array of choices, she says The Lovely Bones was still a no-brainer. “One of the best directors in the world, the script was incredible. And the idea of my character being in the in-between and not on Earth was very appealing. I was by myself a lot of the time. I like working that way.

“As an actor, I found it easier when I was in the in-between than when I was on Earth. Part of acting is separation and escaping yourself.”

McIver, who just finished shooting Predicament with Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement, still hedges her bets on acting (she’s majoring in linguistics and psychology).

Not so Ronan, who looks far enough down the road to say she’d like to write and direct some day. She is wistful about McIver’s school experiences though.

“I have to be tutored. There’s only about three schools where I live (in Ireland’s County Carlow), and the attention I was getting at one of them wasn’t the right kind,” she says. “I don’t really want to go into it, but they didn’t make it easy for me.”

In the meantime, The Lovely Bones is in the middle of its own awards-season circus, and Jackson’s changes have irked some fans of the book.

“I read Twilight,” Ronan says, “and everything in the movie wasn’t exactly the way I’d imagined it. But I accepted it because it was the film version.”

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Also, a photoshoot that Saoirse did in Japan has just surfaced.

Here are the screencaps of Saoirse’s GMTV interview.

Video Link:
01.25.10 : GMTV

The exclusive private school in which child star Saoirse Ronan claims she was given “a hard time” said today that she didn’t even attend lessons there.

The Lovely Bones actress became entangled in controversy after she was reported as saying that she left Kilkenny College after being bullied.

However, in response to questions from the Herald, the school says she never went there.

The teenage actress said at the weekend that she left Protestant school Kilkenny College because she was getting a “hard time” over being famous, and was bullied by other students.

The Oscar nominee explained that she felt it was a “shame” she had to leave the school because of the fact that students were bullying her over her fame.

“I only stayed a while. It wasn’t really working out,” she said. “The school is a good school and the people who go there are good people. But when your schoolmates recognise you before they’ve met you, it can make things very awkward and difficult. It’s a shame.”

However, representatives for the school have hit back at the accusations made by the star, saying that she never attended the school, and have been left “surprised” by her claims.

A school spokesperson said: “We are very surprised at this article. Saoirse Ronan never attended any classes in Kilkenny College.”

A representative for Saoirse claims that the actress was misquoted and “never said that”.

The 15-year-old Carlow native is currently in town for the premiere of her new film.

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Star Movies VIP Access posted an interview with Saoirse about The Love Bones.

Video Link:
01.25.10 : VIP Access

I found two never seen photoshoots. Also, Guardian.co.uk posted an interview with Saoirse.

Saoirse Ronan turned 15 last April and runs on a different clock from the rest of us. She says she’s glad she didn’t start acting young, because it might have screwed her up and burnt her out. It’s not as if she began acting at, say, three or something. She waited ­until she was eight, which was more sensible, because when you reach “our age” (she includes me in this) you at least know what you’re doing, and in any case, things didn’t start getting weird until a few years ago, with the Oscar nomination. “So I’m glad I’m only really starting now,” she says firmly. “Because it means I can be seen as an actor as opposed to a child ­actor.” With that, she wriggles forward on the couch and begins eating her spaghetti bolognese lunch.

Ronan has a roiling Irish accent, gangly adolescent limbs and long, shampoo-ad hair that falls across her face. From time to time, mid-mouthful, she will refer to friends – Susan, Keira, ­Vanessa – and it takes a moment to realise that she means Sarandon, Knightley and Redgrave, all of whom she has worked with and grown close to. She was knee-high to a grasshopper when she landed a role in an Irish soap (The Clinic), and this led to her breakthrough performance as ­meddling Briony Tallis in Atonement, which in turn carried her to within touching distance of an Academy Award. Away from the cameras, she likes to sit around, watch the telly, maybe eat a bag of crisps. There is a river at the bottom of her ­garden where she swims in ­summer, and a family dog, ­Sassie, with which she plays all the time. ­Sometimes she hangs out with her mates; sometimes she plays basketball. “You know,” she says, “normal things.”

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In her latest film, as luck would have it, she plays a girl similarly torn between the real world and a gaudy paradise. The Lovely Bones is based on the 2002 bestseller by Alice Sebold and spot­lights 14-year-old Susie Salmon, a kid in 1970s Pennsylvania who is killed by the local pervert, then looks down on her family from limbo. “Susie’s in the In-Between,” explains her soulful little brother, and what an In-Between it is. The film is directed by Peter ­Jackson, of Lord Of The Rings fame, who goes to town on the blue-screen effects and frames Susie’s afterlife as a schoolgirl fantasy, flushed and florid; a land of blooming rose ­petals and sunflower fields; cascading waterfalls and ­giant turntables that you ride like a carousel. For good measure, Jackson also crops up for a Hitchcockian cameo as a hirsute customer in the local camera store. “I think Pete wants to be an actor,” Ronan says. “He wants to be famous!” But she’s only teasing.

Ronan was so good in Atonement, arguably the best thing in it, because she gave us the sort of child rarely seen in films. Her Briony Tallis was neither a bad seed nor a clamouring cutey-pie. Instead, she was pensive, watchful and complicated; wise beyond her years, though crucially not quite wise enough to read the nuances of adult sexuality. Some viewers found her unsympathetic, which annoyed the actor, who insists she is an innocent who waded out of her depth. “People say Briony’s a bitch, and she’s not. She’s not vindictive or spiteful. It’s just that she doesn’t express her ­emotions; she just sits and observes everything, whereas Susie is much more out there. She’s more your typical teenager, running about in the world, disgusted when she sees her parents kissing.” On balance, Ronan is probably more like Susie than Briony. “It wouldn’t be healthy if I were like Briony.”

Ronan’s background proves quite the mish-mash. I’ve read that she was born in New York to an actor father who carried her, as a babe in arms, to the set of The Devil’s Own, where she met Brad Pitt. The bald biography makes her sound like a dyed-in-the-wool showbiz brat. But in conver­sation there is something rough-edged about her; an unschooled, irrepressible quality that doesn’t go with the script. Besides, she was born in the Bronx, not the Upper East Side, and moved to County Carlow when she was three. Inevitably, her memories of those early years are sketchy. “Unimportant things. I remember my dad’s friend showing me a little spider in a box that shook its legs, and me getting scared. That, and going to Toys R Us. My mam used to drive me to this huge Toys R Us store outside town. Not to buy anything, but just as an outing, to look at things.” She has no memory of meeting Brad Pitt.

Ronan explains that her parents, Paul and ­Monica, had moved to New York because things were bad at home in Ireland. He worked in ­construction and then as a barman, she as a nanny. I tell her this all sounds like some 19th-century novel about immigrants coming to ­America. “I know!” she says, and maps out the opening lines. “He was a barman and she was a nanny! And times were tough!”

Anyway, she continues, what happened was that her dad was tending bar when he met an old Irish actor called Chris O’Neill (“He’s not here any more”) who convinced him to audition for some stage roles, and one thing led to another until the bar’s owner said, “You’ve got to decide. Do you want to be a barman or do you want the acting shit?” Paul Ronan replied, “The acting shit.”

“I don’t come from a family that has money,” she says. “Maybe that’s why this stuff doesn’t bother me. They had to struggle for a long time, and then this happened and things are ­better.” She gestures vaguely at the hotel room, but I think she is referring to the broader picture; the “acting shit”. The TV gigs, movie roles and Oscar nomination that brought her to Hollywood, even though she knew she wasn’t going to win. She was just too young; it wasn’t her time.

From the outside, Ronan’s life looks to me ­almost as ­unreal as Susie Salmon’s afterlife. But, she insists, it doesn’t feel that way to her. Of course it has its oddball aspects. She is not keen on press conferences and premieres, especially the first one in Venice, for Atonement, when ­everyone was screaming for Knightley and she feared they might get lynched. Neither is she ­especially ­comfortable being recognised in the street, which happens a lot in Ireland. “I find that hard to deal with, though I don’t have it as bad as the Twilight people or the Harry Potter kids. But it is weird, ­especially after doing a film like this one. If I ­notice that a guy is looking at me – a man – I think, ‘Is this a really weird guy staring at me, or does he just recognise me from a film?’ ”

Until recently she attended Kilkenny College, a Protestant boarding school in the south-east of Ireland. Now she is home-schooled. “The reason was teachers giving me a hard time. Teachers and students.” She pulls a face. “Some of the students were, you know, mean. But I only stayed a while. It wasn’t really working out. You know, the school is a good school and the people who go there are good people. But when your schoolmates ­recognise you before they’ve met you, and the teachers do, too, it can make things very awkward and ­difficult.” She shrugs it off. “It’s a shame.”

I suspect she’ll be OK, if only because she is too likable not to find a world that suits her. In any case, she is not prepared to give up on formal ­education yet. Her mum left school at 15 (“Trouble with the nuns”) and her dad didn’t last much longer. Their daughter, by contrast, has plans to study film at NYU. “­College is different from school. Isn’t it?” I assure her that it is, or at least it was for me. “That’s right. People are there because they want to be, and you can choose what you want to study. So it’s very different.”

In the meantime, there are busy months ahead. Ronan recently ­completed work on The Way Back, a war drama by Peter Weir, and is due to shoot a new movie in the spring that she would love to tell me about but can’t, even though she is clearly itching to, because it isn’t finalised. On top of that, there’s the long round of promotion for The Lovely Bones, which will take her to Tokyo and then America; a necessary part of the Oscar campaign. Ideally, of course, she’d like a bit more time at home, to watch TV, read her book (The Diary Of Anne Frank) or hang with friends. Plus, Sassie is getting to be an old dog – he’s pushing 12 – and time is precious.

Our own time, it transpires, is almost up. I ­confess I have a silly question to end on and she groans because she thinks she knows what it is. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she flutes in a coy ­falsetto. “Do you have a boyfriend? Ah God, don’t ask me that. It’s so annoying when people ask me that.”

No, that wasn’t it. Never ask a 15-year-old whether they have a boyfriend or girlfriend; it’s mortifying for all concerned. Instead, my dumb question is about the pronunciation of her name, Saoirse, and all the garbled variations she must have heard. Oh right, she says, a little deflated. Well, she has been called Cerise and Sor-cha, and Seraki, too. “You actually say it ­’Sairsha’,” she adds helpfully. “But you can also say it ­Sersha, or Seersha – both are OK.” She rolls her eyes heaven­ward. “But, yeah, it happens all the time. They even spelled it wrong on the Golden Globes poster for ­Atonement. On the Golden Globes poster they got it wrong! ­Sarise Ronan, they called me.” Next time, I think, they’ll get it right.

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‘Lovely Bones’ star relies on family as fame comes fast

An afternoon with Saoirse Ronan is enough to spark some serious parental soul searching.

Sure, she looks like a typical teenager, with her multicolored Nike high-tops, skinny black jeans, and shoulder-length blond hair, which she nervously tucks behind her left ear. The 15-year-old star of Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones,’’ which opens Friday, even sounds like a typical teenager from time to time. But then she makes it clear that, despite her youth, she knows a thing or two about responsibility and commitment.

“I don’t find the balance between work and being a teen to be that difficult, because when I’m with my friends I can be really hyper and silly,’’ Ronan says. “Of course I need to be professional when I’m working. I need to make sure to concentrate – I’m a perfectionist, or at least I try to be.’’

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The Irish actress, whose first name is pronounced Sir-sha (“rhymes with inertia,’’ she explains), was nominated for an Oscar for the 2007 film “Atonement,’’ where she appeared in a supporting part opposite Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Now there’s talk of another nomination for her role as a murdered teen in “The Lovely Bones.’’

“It’s all happened quite quickly,’’ says Ronan, sipping water at a hotel restaurant. “Sometimes it feels like being famous is part of me now and it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary. But sometimes I stop and realize I just did a movie with Peter Jackson and I think, wow, this is actually happening to me.’’

In the film, Ronan plays 14-year-old Susie Salmon who has been killed by her neighbor (Stanley Tucci). Susie narrates the story from somewhere between heaven and earth as she watches over her family and her murderer.

Rose McIver, 21, plays Susie’s younger sister in the film, which spans many years. McIver says she initially worried about the disparity between their on-screen and real-life ages, but fortunately, Ronan helped quell those concerns.

“She was so confident in her ability to pull it off and that was reassuring to me,’’ McIver says by phone from Dallas. “It’s really hard to believe she’s only 15 – she’s just so wise and so mature and so hard-working.’’

The film’s underlying sadness periodically took a toll on Ronan, who says she cannot fully imagine the trauma experienced by abducted children and their families. But she managed to push away the underlying sense of tragedy and loss by focusing on the challenge of her performance.

“I’m able to separate – I just like doing dramatic things – it comes naturally to me,’’ Ronan says. “Maybe because it’s complete escapism from my happy, good life.’’

When she’s not working on a film, Ronan’s life does, in fact, sound fairly idyllic. She lives in a small town in southeastern Ireland with her parents and her beloved border collie, Sassy. It was her father, a television actor in Ireland, who encouraged her to get into the business when she was about 8, she says.

“Dad has always believed in me,’’ she says. “He thought I should get into acting because I’ve always been entertaining. Really, I think I was doing things that almost every other kid does, but Dad thought I was something special.’’

When she is on the road, her parents come along to make sure their daughter is well cared for and to watch her perform.

“They come everywhere with me, and they’re a huge part of keeping me grounded,’’ says Ronan, who seems surprised to learn most 15-year-olds don’t enjoy being trailed by their parents. “And living in the country in Ireland, which is so far away from the Hollywood scene, keeps me from getting caught up. Nobody where I live is interested in that side of things, really.

“I mean, when I told people I was working with Rachel Weisz [who plays her mother in “The Lovely Bones’’], nobody knew who she was. Sometimes I feel like, how can you not know that? But in the end, I think it’s good for me.’’

Something else that keeps Ronan from becoming a self-important Hollywood starlet is watching the bad examples set by some of her young acting peers.

“I won’t name names, but I wouldn’t want to be like those people. The choices they make, the people they hang out with, are just wrong,’’ she says, shaking her head. “You have to use people as examples of what not to be like, and then try and steer away from those kinds of people. The majority of time I actually feel sorry for them, especially because some of them are quite talented and it’s a shame that it’s all down the toilet.’’

Still, as she stands at the cusp of true stardom, Ronan realizes her low-profile life is at risk, and she worries that she might not be completely ready to become a full-blown celebrity.

“I don’t think it’s something you can prepare yourself for,’’ she says. “At the New York premiere, for the first time, I was papped [besieged by paparazzi]. That had never happened to me before. Photographers have followed me in Dublin, which is fine – I mean, it’s only Ireland. But it’s a completely different game in America.’’

These days, life is not even the same in small-town Ireland, Ronan acknowledges. She is wary of people’s motives for trying to befriend her and even suspicious of the young suitors who vie for her attention.

“I have a pretty good instinct,’’ she says. “I’m able to feel people out quite quickly after meeting them, but I always question what they want in the back of my head. Even with boys I think, do you want to go out with Saoirse Ronan the actress or the actual Saoirse?’’

But she doesn’t lose sight of the upside of her success. Having grown up in a home where her parents struggled financially, she is happy to be in a position to help out.

“I know what it’s been like for them, so I appreciate everything I have,’’ she says. “I try to be sensible about what I buy.’’

She does admit to having recently splurged on a $200 leather jacket at a New Jersey factory outlet store. When asked what she liked about it, she shrugs, apparently having reached her quota of questions about her wardrobe.

Maybe there’s a teen in there after all.

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Not every 15-year-old girl gets “Oscar-nominated” placed before her name, but Saoirse Ronan does.

Ronan was nominated for best supporting actress as Briony Tallis, whose lie sets off a series of tragedies in 2007′s “Atonement.” She has a bigger role in “The Lovely Bones,” Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s well-loved novel, which opens Friday. She plays Susie Salmon, the girl who, killed at the beginning, observes her family’s life without her from the In-Between. Ronan spoke recently (in an Irish accent; born in New York, she grew up in Ireland) about the film and the book.

Question: It’s an obvious question, but had you read the book?

Answer: No, I hadn’t. I waited till after I made the movie to read the book. I was about 13 when I started to make it, and I had been told that, in particular, the first chapter was a tough read. Everything I needed, really, was in the script. I just wanted to focus on that form of the story. . . . I just didn’t feel like it was the right time for me because of what it was about, and I knew there was more in the book.

Q: When you read it later, did you picture yourself as Susie?

A: Yeah, I kind of did, actually. I’m not really a fast reader, but I read “The Lovely Bones” in three days. I could picture Susie’s bedroom, because I know what it looks like. I was picturing me as Susie. I think I was more connected to it as well, because it almost felt like it was happening to me.

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Q: Were you nervous about playing a character in such a well-known book?

A: Yeah, I was nervous when I was making the film because I was hoping people would like what I was doing and how the film was. It was always something that was in the back of your mind. I wasn’t as aware of it back then, but “Atonement” was such a success as well; I mean the book was. So a lot of people said beforehand, “No way it’s going to be as good as the book.” We kind of proved them wrong.

Q: Did you want to do another movie based on a well-known book?

A: It was kind of coincidental, really. I didn’t mean to pick those type of movies, or even dramatic movies. I would like to do comedy and things like that as well. It just happened that, at the time, the quality scripts I was reading were those. I think it’s always so great to have lots of color, to experiment with those kind of things, and in “Atonement,” especially, we did that a lot.

Q: There is a fair amount of computer-generated imagery in the film, of your character in the In-Between. Is it difficult to act when you can’t see what the audience will later see?

A: It wasn’t too difficult, actually, I think because Pete has experimented with blue screen and CGI before. And this is in no way a CGI movie, either. Well, I don’t think it is. The likes of “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong,” an awful lot of it was about the action. It was very big, whereas “The Lovely Bones” is a bit more emotional, I suppose. It’s more about the emotions than anything else.

Q: You get the chance to play a lot of emotions.

A: I’m alive, I’m dead, I get to be in a fashion show. She’s not moping around, and she’s constantly trying to contact her father in particular and convict her murderer, and try and come to terms with the fact that she’s dead and watching her sister grow up before her. There’s an awful lot going on while she’s stuck there.

Q: What’s it like to see yourself on-screen?

A: For me it’s been different for every movie that I’ve watched. For some that I didn’t spend as much time on, or maybe didn’t like as much as another one I did, it wouldn’t be that hard to just sit back and accept it as a movie. With “Atonement,” surprisingly – and this wasn’t because I disliked it or anything – I found it very easy to accept that this was Briony Tallis, and this was a film and I could sort of forget that it was something that I worked on. I don’t know why that was. When I saw “The Lovely Bones” – I’ve seen it twice now – although I really was blown away by it, it was beautiful, it was very strange for me to sit back and watch because I had spent so much time on it.

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At only 15, and with two critically acclaimed movies and one Oscar nod under her belt, we’d better start pronouncing Saoirse Ronan’s name right: “It’s sur-shuh, like inertia.”

“It’s Irish for freedom,” the actress goes on to explain of her first name. “It’s gotten to the point where I’m checking my own name when I write it, because so many people misspell it.”

If her career continues on the trajectory it’s presently following, she won’t have to worry about that confusion much longer. After a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role in 2007’s “Atonement,” Ronan takes on another weighty story in Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones,” about a young murder victim who watches her grieving family members from a purgatory-like “in-between.”

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Even though she started filming the project at the tender age of 13, Ronan was able to keep disturbing subject matter in perspective.

“Luckily I’m not a method actor so it was sort of essential to me to try and forget about it at the end of the day,” she confesses.

Ronan is right between the two worlds of childhood and adulthood herself, confidently answering each rapid-fire question as she bounces one of her multi-colored sneakered feet under the table. Her parents are sitting only a few feet away while we chat.

But from the looks of things, she’s no Lindsay Lohan in the making. When asked about which child actress she’d most like to emulate, Ronan reveals formidable goals. “Probably Jodie Foster or Natalie Portman. Not only because they’re great actresses and they’re intelligent and they picked good roles and they’re nice people, but also because they directed as well, and I want to direct, too.”

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About.com released an new interview with Saoirse on the BAFTA/LA Awards Season Tea Party.

Transcript: The Lovely Bones – Saoirse Ronan Interview
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the 16th Annual BAFTA/LA Awards Season Tea Party held Saturday, January 16, 2010 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA.

Saoirse Ronan – The Lovely Bones
Congratulations on your win last night.

Saoirse Ronan: “Thank you very much. It was unexpected. I wasn’t aware of the nominees until a couple of days ago and so I looked it up. Even though there quite a bit younger than me I had seen the little girl in Brothers and the little boy who plays Max in Where the Wild Things Are, and I was completely blown away by both of them. So I really didn’t know who was going to win so it was great.”

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Well, congratulations. That role must have been incredible to step into. So many people love the book, so how tough was that and did it weigh on your shoulders at all when you’re doing it?

Saoirse Ronan: “Not as much when I was doing it – more afterwards. I mean, I did think about it. It was more really that I was worried about not giving Pete [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh] and Philippa [Boyens] what they wanted, not really the readers. But, I haven’t worried about it. It’s something that I’m aware of. And now that it’s opened wide, it opened yesterday, I’m anxious to see what it does.”

Working with Peter, the guy’s not only a genius but also a really nice man…

Saoirse Ronan: “I know.”

What was he like as a director? How’d he help you out?

Saoirse Ronan: “Well he helped me out immensely. I’ve never really worked with a director like Peter before. I really haven’t. And I actually missed working with him when we finished. I still miss his type of direction. He’s very physically involved. He would actually sometimes act out the scenes for me, which I loved. He wouldn’t – not with acting, just physically. And he put an awful lot of energy into his direction. And he’s good at everything. He’s an actor’s director. Technicality-wise he’s great as well.”

And you had to have a lot of faith in him because a lot of the stuff that you’re working with is not there that you’re working against.

Saoirse Ronan: “Yeah, I was a little bit nervous before I actually read the script and met them. And then I met them and I just instantly felt like I was in safe hands because they’ve got a family themselves. They’ve got children – three of the have. And I knew that everything was going to be okay; it was going to be very tastefully done.”

And Stanley [Tucci] is such a nice guy and he plays the most evil guy on earth. Between scenes, how did you guys interact?

Saoirse Ronan: “Well Stanley and I get on really well, which was essential, I think, for us to have a good relationship, and to be able to bounce off of each other. Because the intense scenes that we had together would have been very difficult to do if we couldn’t go to those awkward, uncomfortable, deep places. But in between takes I’d just go up and give Stanley a hug.”

That’s nice to hear. And you’re reuniting with Joe Wright?

Saoirse Ronan: “I am, yeah. I’m doing with Hannah with him in a couple months, so it’s very exciting. Yeah, i can’t wait to start working with him again.”

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During her freshman year at Syracuse University, Alice Sebold was raped in Thornden Park. In 2002 the SU alumnus published the novel, “The Lovely Bones” is a story that follows a teenage girl who, after being raped and murdered, watches her family and friends from heaven as they continue on with their lives and tries to piece together her death. A movie adaptation of the novel opened last weekend in theaters nationally. Saoirse Ronan, the actress who plays the victim in the movie, talks about her experiences working on the film.

On what it’s like to play a character in a book adaptation and whether conflicts with the director arise when it comes to interpreting a role

Well, I would focus more on the character and the screenplay instead of the book because it’s a different version of telling the story. It’s the film version, so yeah, I’m going to focus on that a little bit more. But still it’s (handy) to be, you know, making movies that were based on books as well. No, I haven’t had any conflicts really with the directors that I’ve worked with, so I’ve been very lucky. We’ve been on the same page. We’ve gotten on really well, so no, we’ve understood each other. I’m good.

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On the similarities she has with Susie Salmon

Yeah, there’s a few. I mean, Susie’s a typical teenage girl, so I think that hopefully when girls go and see this movie, they’re going to connect with her in some way. But, yeah, I mean, you know, she’s interested in photography and fashion and things like that, and boys of course, so I’m interested in all those things.

On how her roles in “Atonement” and “The Lovely Bones” influenced her outlook on life

With “Atonement” it wasn’t that influential because it, you know, it was a bitter girl who’s very in on herself. And I mean, I suppose that it would make you think more before you speak if anything, but “The Lovely Bones” in particular just made me appreciate what I have. You know, that I’m lucky to be here, I’m lucky to have the amazing family that I have. It’s also made me more aware of things that go on in the world, these awful crimes that are committed every day. So, yeah, so it’s boosted my awareness.

On whether playing Susie Salmon was challenging and how she prepared for the role

Yeah, it was challenging, it – as you said – it’s a very serious subject matter and it was always going to be a challenge for me because I hadn’t done anything quite that deep before. But it’s also very light and, you know, it’s full of hope, and so in that way, it was easy. But when we dealt with very, you know, emotional scenes, intense scenes, there would be a lot of discussion between me and Pete (Jackson) and Fran (Walsh) and Philippa (Boyens) who are the writers as well. So, yeah, we just talked a lot about it and just made sure that we were going in the same direction and we were on the same page.

On starring in films with dark themes

You know, I find sometimes it’s quite easy to be the opposite to how you are in real life for me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just because it’s not somewhere that I go very often. The door is always open for me to go there. So, yeah, I mean, it’s just – it just take a lot of thinking and, you know, I really understood Susie and Peter, who’s obviously involved. We were on the same page and we have the same outlook on what she was going to be like and everything. So, yeah, it just took a lot of thinking.

On being nominated for an Academy Award at a young age

It was – oh, it was crazy. I was working. I was actually on “Lovely Bones” at the time, so I was very busy with that. And then, suddenly this thing happened and it was exciting, and it was kind of nerve-wrecking and, but you know, it was great and it was a great honor for me to be nominated so young and it was a film that I really enjoyed doing. So, yeah, I was really, really happy.

On awards season buzz for “The Lovely Bones”

To be honest, I try not to think about award season at all, especially when it concerns a movie that I’ve made. I think, you know, nobody, none of the press, have actually seen the movie yet, so it’s not fair to say, but it’s great that they’re putting it at such a high level already. Hopefully it does well. I just really hope that everyone enjoys it – that they connect to it as much as they did with the book. So if awards come as well, then that’s brilliant.

On whether any characters or performances influenced her preparation for the role of Susie Salmon

No, not really. I mean, she’s a typical teenage girl, so she’s very similar to myself and my friends, and you know, girls I’ve seen on the TV, so yeah, it was very easy to – in a way – become a sort of friend of hers, you know? She’s a very happy person, so it was easy to go there.

On filming the heaven scenes

It was kind of a little bit surreal at first because it was all blue screen and I hadn’t worked with that much blue screen before, only a little bit. And most of heaven was going to be put in afterward. So, it was sometimes difficult to try and imagine what it was going to be like, what it was going to look like. We obviously had an idea in our head of what the basic picture of it was going to be. But it, you know, it was great and I saw the movie a few days ago and it was a lovely surprise to finally see heaven.

On whether she suggested any of her own beliefs about the afterlife to the directors during filming

No, not really. I think that their plans for heaven seemed to work really well and I didn’t really want to play around with that at all, you know, its elements. It’s Susie’s life on Earth that have created her in between things that she was connected to in some way, and I think it was a very logical thing to do. It made sense. So yeah, so I think they knew what they were doing, so I just left them to it.

On what viewers should take away from the film

Well, I think that the message of this movie, although it may not seem like it to people who haven’t seen it yet, is ultimately hope and how you get there. You know, when Susie arrives in the in-between, she doesn’t want to go forward, which would mean accepting her death. She wants to be back on Earth with her family, and she knows she can’t do that. And to get there, you know, it’s about her love for her family and not the hate and vengeance that she has for her murder. So yeah, so it’s hope.

On working with Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson

I absolutely loved working with them. They’re brilliant. They’re partners, so they’re together all the time pretty much. And Fran is one of the kindest, sweetest women I have ever met. I love her. She’s funny. She’s creative. She’s just wonderful. And Pete and her are like a rock. They’re just great together, and of course I love working with Pete as well, as director and as a friend.

On how Peter Jackson works with actors

He’s pretty involved. I mean, he’ll let you be free to – if you want to try something out he’s, you know, he’s very welcoming toward that kind of approach. But he likes to be very involved with his actors and he’s always there. He’s always up and ready to go, and he was great because he would kind of act through what we were going to do, which made me and the girl who played Holly, it made us laugh sometimes. He was just great. But, yeah, he was very hands on.

On why she always plays serious roles instead of lighter ones

Well, I don’t think I’m really that kind of actor anyway. I’ll leave Miley Cyrus to that. But I think you’re right. I think it’s important that I do something a little bit more lighthearted. I mean, you know, the first movie that I made was a romcom and it was funny and lighthearted, so yeah, it’s important for me to do something like that and, you know, there’s a few scripts that aren’t quite as serious as what I’ve done so far. So hopefully they’ll work out and you’ll see me on a lighter note.

On what she’s learned while working with more experienced actors

I think it’s just the way they are on set. I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of actors that just have a really good approach to working with other people, to being with other people every day, and you need that when you’re working on a movie. You become a family unit, so it’s very important to get on with everyone. And it’s not as much with acting itself because everyone kind of has their own thing that they do. So, the people that I’ve worked with have been very respectful towards me and they know that I have my own thing going on. So, it’s more just the attitude that they have on set and the etiquette and that’s, you know, I’ve taken that away.

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