Saoirse Ronan Web | s-ronan.com

It is confirmed that Saoirse will be star in the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s novel The Host. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know if it is good. But good for Saoirse since according the following article, she will play two character Melanie Stryder(human) and Wanderer(the Soul) in this film. So this is definitely another acting challenge for her.

Saoirse Ronan has been set to star in The Host, the screen adaptation of the bestselling novel by Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer. Scripted by Andrew Niccol, the film figures to be one of the hot titles when Inferno launches sales at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival next week. Niccol, who was originally set to direct, might resurface as the filmmaker.

Ronan, the Oscar-nominated star of Atonement, The Lovely Bones and most recently Hanna, will play Melanie Stryder, one of the last humans putting up a fight against an alien species called Souls. These parasites invade human bodies, fuse to each person’s consciousness and systematically erase their personalities. Melanie is captured by the aliens and implanted by a Soul called Wanderer, something of a legend because of all of the “hosts” she has attached to on numerous planets. Wanderer’s goal is to get Melanie to give up the remaining pockets of humans, but instead the alien finds Melanie to be unique in her unwillingness to surrender her consciousness. Wanderer is so overwhelmed by Melanie’s memories and feelings, the alien is driven to reconnect with Melanie’s old life.

The concept is more of a visual challenge than Meyer’s Twilight Saga books, but one thing they plan is for Ronan to play both Melanie and Wanderer. Meyer’s book has an enormous fan base, and the author had long resisted offers to sell it. She finally made a deal two years ago with producers Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, who’d done the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road together. They deliberately developed the script outside the studio system, and invited the author to be very hands on in the adaptation. Meyer was involved down to choosing Niccol because she was such a fan of his films Gattaca and his script for The Truman Show. Niccol wrote the script to direct, but left to direct Now with Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy. Nanny McPhee Returns director Susanna White was briefly attached, but that isn’t happening. Niccol, now done with his film, is once again in the mix as possible helmer. Inferno’s Marc Butan, Jim Seibel and Bill Johnson are exec producing and Roger Schwartz is co-producer. The film’s being funded by the producers and Inferno.

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Thanks to Caro for the heads up.

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Oscar-nominated at just 13 for Atonement, Saoirse Ronan is playing a trained assassin in her latest film, Hanna. She’s already tackled death and betrayal on screen, but remains charmingly girlish – and says that being a child is an asset in the make-believe world of movies
Saoirse Ronan is looking forward to her first ever music festival. She’s already booked her ticket for Oxegen in County Kildare and is very excited about a line-up that features some of her favourite bands (Arctic Monkeys, Black Eyed Peas) and the chance to sleep in a caravan with three of her best friends. ‘That will be so cool,’ she giggles. ‘I wouldn’t even mind a tent in the mud, I so want to go!’

Like most 17-year-olds she’s music-mad, and is all set for an adventure that has become a rite of passage for teenagers across Europe. That is, if work doesn’t get in the way.

Because while her mates will be fretting about exam results and part-time jobs this summer, Saoirse (pronounced Seer-sha) will be on the other side of the world from her native Ireland making a blockbuster movie. With a CV that’s the envy of many twice her age (including an Academy Award nomination for Atonement), she’s on course to make the tricky transition from child success to genuine grown-up star, like, say, Jodie Foster, the Oscar-winning actress she is often compared to.

‘The people I’ve worked with have been lovely. Keira was sweet. And Cate was great – she’s like a wicked witch in Hanna!’

Her latest film, the thriller Hanna (directed by Joe Wright, who also cast her in Atonement), sees her holding her own alongside Hollywood big hitters such as Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana. She plays the title role, a young girl who has grown up in the wilds of Finland and been trained by her father (a former CIA agent played by Eric) to avenge her mother’s death by killing her murderer (Cate).

‘I love Cate! She’s like a wicked witch in Hanna and she’s great,’ says Saoirse. ‘She brought her little baby Iggy [Ignatius] on to the set and he was just adorable. She’s really lovely – and she’s professional and focused, and I like to be that way, too.’

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Ms Blanchett doubtless recognises a kindred spirit. Saoirse has been constantly in demand ever since she appeared as an eight-year-old in an Irish TV hospital soap called The Clinic, and acting is all she’s ever wanted to do.

‘I’ve always liked being in front of the camera. My dad always had the camcorder out.’ The only child of character actor Paul Ronan (from Ballykissangel, as well as films including The Boxer and Veronica Guerin) and Monica, a former nanny, Saoirse has been on film sets all her life. ‘When I was a baby my dad took me on set when he was in The Devil’s Own with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford, although, to be honest, I don’t remember that.’

She’s about to play Itaril the Elf in Peter Jackson’s film based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which has begun shooting in New Zealand. Peter also chose her for the highly coveted role of Susie Salmon in his 2009 movie The Lovely Bones (for which she got a Bafta nomination), so he’s clearly a fan. But of course it would mean missing Oxegen. ‘I know! It’s crazy, but I’m going to see if I can fly back for it – that’s how much I want to go!’ Saoirse may have been flown around the world first class several times – and rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in Hollywood – but she’s polite and endearingly straightforward, despite inhabiting a vastly different world from most of her friends.

‘I don’t feel I’ve had to grow up faster because of my job,’ she explains. ‘In a way, it helps to be a child, because children always act – it’s natural to pretend. Being around adults and involved in in-depth stories and thinking about characters has certainly helped me to mature. But I’ve always been kind of mature anyway, without forgetting that I’m still young.’

Saoirse has already tackled some serious issues – playing a young girl who is murdered in The Lovely Bones, and exploring the repercussions of deceit in Atonement, as the young Briony, a 13-year-old who accuses a man of a crime he didn’t commit, with devastating consequences.

She doesn’t get fazed by the stars she works with: she has already appeared alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Catherine Zeta Jones, Rachel Weisz and Colin Farrell. And the stellar cast of Atonement included Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

‘I love my job but it’s just what I do and I don’t think it has changed me’

‘The people I’ve worked with have been lovely to me. I remember Keira as very sweet to be around. She didn’t seem to think of herself as a movie star, and that’s always good in my book.’

Atonement was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 2007, including best supporting actress for a 13-year-old Saoirse, although she lost out to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton. The night itself, with Saoirse dolled up in her finest designer frock, went by in a bit of a blur.

‘I wore a green Alberta Ferretti dress, which was very nice but kept getting caught in everything,’ she laughs. ‘I wanted to wear a green dress just to say, “Hey, I’m at the Oscars and I’m Irish!” But everybody thought I wore it because Keira had a green dress in Atonement.’

Off duty she’s at home in high-street fashion – today she is curled up in Levi’s and a striped top – but is developing a taste for high-end: ‘With stores like Topshop and H&M you can find really great stuff, but I do like designer things as well, and I’m lucky because they approach me to wear their stuff. I really love Miu Miu.’

Alabaster pale with cornflower blue eyes, Saoirse is willowy and strikingly pretty. She’s also aware of the body-image pressures that young actresses face. ‘But I think it’s changing. I mean, look at Helena Bonham Carter. She’s beautiful but she often plays against how she looks and I really respect that. I like to look good but you have to be individual too.’

Born in New York, while her father was working there, Saoirse returned to the County Carlow countryside when she was three years old, and the family still lives there now. Today, Mum and Dad are pottering about nearby, keeping a watchful eye on proceedings. ‘They travel with me and it’s great to have them by my side because it makes me feel safe. We’re very close.’

There’s no serious boyfriend on the scene yet. ‘I mean, I have boys who are friends, but not a boyfriend as such,’ she giggles. That’s for the future
– in the meantime, she wants to hang out with her mates and see bands in Dublin.
Her close friends are proud of her achievements, but not – she stresses – overawed by her life as an actress. ‘I would hate it if the people that I know from school or my village treated me differently. I don’t take my friends to see my films.

I like to watch it once – just out of curiosity to see how it turned out – but after that I’m kind of done with it.’

For the past three years she has been home-schooled – having one-to-one tuition when she’s on a film set and taking lessons ith her tutors in Ireland. But she’s doing her best to stay ‘normal’.

‘When I’m away I keep in touch with my friends by text, emails, Skype and phone calls. I love my job, but it’s just what I do and I don’t think it has changed me. Mostly, I can leave a role behind when I go home at the end of a day’s filming, although sometimes, when you’re dealing with death or rape or betrayal, it does affect you. It makes you think about things. Especially when I was playing Susie Salmon [in The Lovely Bones]. I would think about all the girls who have been murdered, and I would get upset because I was so close to Susie and I had connected with her.’

Playing the title role in Hanna was challenging in a different way. ‘Physically, it was tough,’ she says. ‘I had a lot of fight scenes to do and I did everything myself.’ Her fitness and martial-arts sessions started three months before filming, and there were times when her aching muscles were screaming for a rest. ‘I kind of felt like, “Can I just stay in bed today?”’ she laughs. ‘But I am a very motivated person. And I knew it had to be done, so I did it.’

The film has a surreal beauty, shot in remote locations in Finland, where it frequently dropped to minus 29C, and in Morocco, where the heat soared above 38C.
It’s a thriller but also a contemporary fairy tale – a girl raised in isolation to be the perfect survivor goes out into the big bad world, where she meets ruthless CIA operative Marissa (played with relish by Cate Blanchett), an agent who
will stop at nothing to cover up a mission that went wrong and resulted in the murder of Hanna’s mother.

Hanna is physically equipped to deal with the dangers that lie ahead, but totally unprepared for the modern world. She’s both an innocent abroad, and a stone-cold killer.

‘Obviously her situation is extreme – she’s been trained to kill and nothing’s going to stop her. But, in a way, she’s going through the same thing that every teenager goes through, stepping out into the world thinking everything is going to be perfect and everyone is going to be good, and it’s not like that.

‘Hanna feels isolated – she doesn’t know anyone and doesn’t understand anyone – and there are plenty of young people who feel that way. So I was able to relate to her and that helped.’

Saoirse looks particularly striking with her hair and eyebrows bleached out for the film. ‘I was very conscious that I didn’t have any eyebrows. It was about a season before bleached eyebrows came into fashion, and later all those gorgeous models had the look, so I felt like a trendsetter!

‘Do you know what I’d like to do? I might get my hair cut a bit shorter. I’ve seen posters in Topshop where the girls have little blue and pink bits in their hair – Lady Gaga has done that and it looks really cool – so I might try it.’

In many ways, Saoirse is just like thousands of other teenage girls – bright, funny, engaging and fashion crazy, with a healthy hint of rebellion. Except, in her case, that means there’s a good chance of her making an appearance at the next Oscars with blue and pink streaks in her strawberry-blonde hair.

BOOKS The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy — stick with it and it’s very romantic. And I’ve just finished The Story of Film by Mark Cousins.
MUSIC Lady Gaga, the Strokes, Florence and the Machine and the Smiths. I’ve been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan too, and obviously the Beatles are amazing. On Hanna, me and Jessica Barden used to do our Lady Gaga routine in hair and make-up.

CLOTHES I’m into grunge boots. And I’ve got this cool pair of multicoloured Nikes. For me, clothes are about individuality. When I wear things that are different and it works, it makes me feel good. One of my favourite things at the moment is a Calvin Klein bomber jacket with a wool collar and lots of zips.

ACCESSORIES I have a couple of pairs of sunglasses that I adore — eggshell-blue Ray-Bans and black Tom Fords. I also love bags. My favourite is a gorgeous burnt-orange Miu Miu. It’s the perfect size — I can put my phone in there, make-up, a bottle of water, sunglasses, and away I go.

MAKE-UP I don’t wear a lot when I’m doing my own thing, but I’ve always got a concealer palette for when I’ve got spots or I’m looking tired. And I’ll use a bit of glitter now and then.

STYLE ICON Sienna Miller is a great dresser — she always looks so cool. Alexa Chung wears some amazing things. And Lady Gaga is a complete style icon — she writes her own music, she’s a fantastic singer and she has created a world for herself and her fans. She loves her fans and we love her.

SAVING UP FOR An amplifier. My uncle Joe got me a record player recently and I haven’t got an amp for it yet. I’ve got the Beatles’ White Album and David Bowie’s Space Oddity on vinyl already, but I’d like some more records. You’ve got to love it when you see shelves stacked with vinyl.

DRINK Well, I’m only 17! I drink a lot of water, but that’s boring, so maybe I should say something like fizzy lizard juice with glitter mixed in. That sounds cool!

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