Page 30 - ARUBA TODAY

A30
PEOPLE & ARTSFriday 29 December 2017
‘Lady Bird’s’ Saoirse Ronan
comes of age on screen, in life
This file image released by A24 Films shows Saoirse Ronan, left, By LINDSEY BAHR
AP Film Writer
and Laurie Metcalf in a scene from “Lady Bird.” BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) —
Saoirse Ronan is eyeing the
lobster salad at Spago in
Beverly Hills and has a dif-
ficult decision to make re-
garding cherry tomatoes.
She doesn’t like them, but
she also doesn’t like asking
for special accommoda-
tions.
“It’s so Irish,” Ronan ex-
plains. “In Ireland you feel
so guilty for requesting
something to not be in the
dish. No one would ever
do it. But I like that they do
it over here. I like the gutsi- ahead of the curve among
ness!”
After a moment of delib-
eration she decides to go
full American and ask the
waiter whether or not it
might be possible to hold
the cherry tomatoes.
“Absolutely,” he says with-
out pause.
“America,” she sighs, smil-
ing.
Ronan has recently arrived
stateside fresh off of film-
ing “Mary Queen of Scots”
in Scotland and is staring
down months of cam-
paigning for “Lady Bird,”
the semi-autobiographical
film from writer-director
Greta Gerwig that has be-
come an unlikely awards
season mainstay. It re-
cently even surpassed last
year’s best picture winner
“Moonlight” to become
the highest-grossing film for
distributor A24.
Ronan plays the Gerwig
stand-in Christine McPher-
son, who has begun in-
sisting that everyone call
her Lady Bird for reasons
that are never wholly ex-
plained. She’s navigating
college applications, shift-
ing friendships, boys and
an increasingly tense rela-
tionship with her mother,
played by Laurie Metcalf.
It’s been earning Ronan
some of the best reviews
of her career, and will likely
result in a third Oscar nomi-
nation for the 23-year-old.
“I know we’re doing an
interview but I’m sorry I’m
just talking about myself,”
Ronan says wearily. “You
reach a point when you’re
doing press and you’re like
‘I’ve JUST spoken about
myself for three weeks.’”
Still, Ronan is in particularly there beyond what we’re
good spirits today (though
one could not really imag-
ine any other state of be-
ing) because her mother
(“my best friend”) has just
flown in to stay with her for
a while.
With two Oscar nomina-
tions under her belt (she’s
among the youngest to
have ever received a sup-
porting actress nomination,
at 13 for “Atonement,”
and a best actress nomina-
tion, at 21, for “Brooklyn”)
Ronan is, by all accounts,
her peers and adored by
those who work with her.
“Saoirse is the best acting
partner in the world,” says
Metcalf. “She is a beauti-
ful mix of somebody with a
strong work ethic, and yet,
she knows how to keep
things light on the set and
joke with the crew and the
cast and then manage to
be fully present as soon as
it was time to work.”
Ryan Gosling, who direct-
ed her in “Lost River,” has
even said she is Meryl (as in
Streep) “reborn.”
And yet Ronan still car-
ried doubts about her per-
formance in “Lady Bird”
for months, worrying that
she hadn’t done the part
justice, or, worse, wasn’t
“good enough for Greta.”
She says on day one of
production, she felt she
hadn’t fully figured out her
character yet.
Personally, too, she’s in a
place in her life where she
feels like she’s still figuring she’s sort of that way too.
some things out.
“I’ve always loved (act-
ing) so much but it’s all
I’ve ever known. And I had
a panic recently where I
thought I’ve got to go do
other things. I’ve got to go
travel. I even find when
I’m working, I can’t read, I
can’t watch TV, I can’t do
anything. I guess I can listen
to podcasts but I can’t re-
ally be stimulated by any-
thing other than the proj-
ects. Your world becomes
so small,” Ronan says. “So
last year, I took 6 months
off before ‘Mary’ which is
the best thing I could have
done. It just reminds you
that there is a world out
doing.”
It’s part of what makes
“Lady Bird,” and its ability
to affect many different
kinds of people who see
themselves in the story, so
special. Ronan, for all her
ability to appear so worldly
and composed in front of
the camera, remembers
how lonely it felt being a
teenager. And when she
moved out on her own
around 19 or 20, she felt
like she was faking her
way through adult life —
for example, scoping out
the grocery carts of other
adults at the supermarket
for clues about what to
buy (“oh, eggs!”).
Something that gave her
comfort at the time was
the HBO show “Girls.”
“Even though they were a
little older, Lena (Dunham)
and Jenni (Konner) cap-
tured what it was to be a
girl and in a city and on
your own and not knowing
what the (expletive) you’re
doing ...You feel like you’re
being understood,” she
says. “I hope that ‘Lady
Bird,’ well, I feel like it is do-
ing that — helping people
to feel like they’re being
understood.”
It’s something her mom did
for her with her “Lady Bird”
performance.
“My mom was so wise. She
kept saying to me that the
fact that you haven’t fig-
ured her out completely or
were kept on your toes in
a way was good because
Myself and Greta and Lady
Bird were all trying to figure
her out together. That ac-
tually made sense to me,”
Ronan says. “The charac-
ter kind of takes on a life of
her own and you’re just try-
ing to keep up with them.”
Ronan lets her upbring-
ing get the better of her
at the end of the meal as
she looks at her half-eaten,
cherry-tomato free salad.
She politely asks for a to-go
box, but she has no inten-
tion of taking it with her.
She just doesn’t want to of-
fend the chef.
Ronan shrugs: “It’s so
Irish.”q