Grounded for life

COVER STORY:EVEN FANS OF The Clinicand Proofwere sideswiped by the rapid rise of young Saoirse Ronan. Before she whipped Atonementfrom under the noses of pros such as Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, the young actor, now 15, had done little else but play recurring roles in those RTÉ series. Here in Ireland, we like to hype our rising talent, but nobody saw that performance coming, writes DONALD CLARKE

Then, to add to the surprise, she turned out to have an engaging way with the media. Unlike some child actors – who deserve to be sent to bed with no Baftas – she seemed to have mastered the act of seeming (or, let’s be fair, being) impressively normal.

In London to promote her role in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, Ronan has positioned herself in front of a plate of pasta and a soft drink. Curled up on the extravagant sofa, she has the aspect of a teenager ready to watch Twilightwhile scoffing her tea. Unfortunately, she has to look at me rather than Robert Pattinson.

Most 15-year-olds would find the interview process intimidating. I wonder how she manages to seem so relaxed. Did the media-training wonks get at her before her first junket? Of course, her father is an actor himself.

“Well my parents are still with me,” she says. “But no. I have only recently heard about the business of media training. I never had any. My dad did maybe give me a few pointers about how to answer question – and what subjects to avoid.”

Back in 2007, the attention that followed the release of Atonement – not to mention her subsequent Oscar nomination – must have come as a significant surprise. After all, the young Briony Tallis – the character Ronan played – only appeared in the first third of the picture.

Ronan is, however, the fulcrum around which The Lovely Bonesspins. Based on a hugely popular novel by Alice Sebold, the film focuses on a child's murder in a wiggy, spooky version of 1970s America. Following her death, Susie Salmon – suspended in a weird afterlife, whose slightly queasy decorations reflect her own teenage sensibility – watches as her parents, arguing and railing, seek to discover her missing remains. Meanwhile, the murderer, played by Stanley Tucci, continues to live right across the street.

Some actors can shake off such misery when they remove their costumes. Others carry it home with them.

“It did worry me sometimes – especially near the start of making the movie,” she says. “Sometimes I found it difficult to not imagine what a family like the Salmons would be going through. It’s hard. Their child is taken away and they just don’t know where she is. It’s awful to just have blood as memory and evidence. I would think of the other girls who were murdered in the story and I would get upset and cry. At the same time, I had to put that aside and carry on.”

Amiably gangly, with long graceful features, Ronan does come across like a typical teenager, but, as that answer clarifies, she has a very disciplined, focused approach to the work. True, she was born into the business. She was not, however, raised among a Barrymore clan or a Redgrave dynasty. When Saoirse Ronan came into the world, her dad, Paul, was supplementing his acting gigs with shifts as a barman and construction worker. They had recently moved to New York, but, as the Irish economy began to improve, elected to go home. The family now live in Carlow (though Ronan’s own accent has distinct hints of Dublin).

We instinctively, unfairly assume that all child actors are driven into the business by disappointed, club-wielding parents. Ronan does a good job of dismantling those preconceptions. "Mam and dad aren't pushy at all," she says. "Dad is an actor and he casually said to his Irish agent when I was younger: 'See if you can put her up for a few things.' When I was still very young, I got a part in The Clinicand then in Proof. I somehow got Atonementand it then took off."

Ronan’s assurance in Joe Wright’s adaption of Ian McEwan’s novel was extraordinary. She had a stillness and a firmness that spoke of total immersion in the character. Where did that come from?

“I think it depends on the character; whether you get her straight away,” she says. “With Briony I just got her like that. And it’s funny. I’m not like her at all. But for some reason, I got her. With Susie, I didn’t really know what to do at first, and as I went along I discovered the character. I hadn’t read the book – I was just 13 when we started – but by the end I was the character. It was a journey.”

There are downsides to fame. In a recent Guardian interview – some details of which had to be retracted following calls from m’learned friends – she admitted that, following her brush with fame, school stopped being much fun. “When your schoolmates recognise you before they’ve met you, and the teachers do, too, it can make things very awkward and difficult,” she said.

She is now taught at home, but, the modern world being what it is, bullies and jealous nutters must still manage to whisper the odd word in her ear? No class of actor receives larger amounts of sniping on cyberspace than does the female teenager. A famous near-contemporary of Saoirse’s (no names) has, according to posters on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), been pregnant by another teen star for about three years.

“Yeah, I read that too,” she says with a disgusted laugh. “There’s another friend of mine who they also said that about.”

So, does she manage to avoid the temptation to google herself? Even plumbers, solicitors and harbourmasters will find rude stuff about themselves if they look hard enough. (“He calls that a U-bend! What a fraud!”) Lord knows what it must be like as a teenage actor

“I have been foolish a few times and looked it up,” she says. “But, yeah, I try my best to avoid it – especially things like IMDb. An awful lot of the time people are jealous. Then again, maybe they just don’t like me. But they say very mean things. Now, I know it would be a lot worse being someone like Miley Cyrus, who really attracts that awful stuff, but I do get some nasty stuff. I’ll see something nice and think: that’s great. Then a few days later, I’ll see someone saying I’m not pretty or whatever. That’s not fair. Express your opinion, but don’t post it on the internet. Don’t be mean.”

Still, Saoirse Ronan is sensible enough to recognise that there are many more ups than downs to her current position. Two years ago, she even got to storm up the red carpet as an Oscar nominee. She was ultimately beaten to the Best Supporting Actress gong by Tilda Swinton for her performance in Michael Clayton, but it must have been a headspinning experience for a young girl.

“I’ll tell you what’s surprising. It’s really, really long. The ceremony is about three hours and the red carpet seems to last about two hours. So, that’s all very draining. But it’s really exciting. To meet all those stars is great. It ends up feeling quite surreal.”

And she has to pick a dress, of course.

"That is really, really stressful. I was already working on The Lovely Bonesand I didn't really have any experience. I was forced to organise a dress with a stylist, but, if that happens again, I will have more experience."

It almost certainly will happen again, but, alas, not this year. Since the interview, The Lovely Boneshas opened to distinctly iffy reviews and somewhat underwhelming box-office in the US. The critics were generally appreciative of Ronan's performance, but, when the Oscar nominations were announced last week, her name was not on the list.

Yes, it can be a tough old business. Ronan spent a good six months of her life shooting The Lovely Bonesin Jackson's home country of New Zealand. Indeed, for a large part of the last three years, she has occupied caravans in odd parts of the world. Recently, she was in Bulgaria shooting The Way Backwith director Peter Weir, and will soon begin work playing a teen assassin in Joe Wright's Hanna. That will undoubtedly involve another jaunt. She must get a little homesick.

“Well it depends where you are,” she says. “When I was in New Zealand, it was the farthest I had been from home. It’s the farthest you can get from Ireland. But it felt like home. People are just so similar. I loved it there. Then I went to Bulgaria and Morocco, and I was very homesick. It’s funny how that works.”

Ronan really does come across as an intriguing amalgam. One moment she is bouncing round the room, acting out Peter Jackson’s directing style; the next she is calmly explaining the intricacies of discovering a character’s inner motivations. Which Saoirse reveals herself when she’s at home: the teen or the thespian?

“Oh I like being with my friends and playing with my dog when I’m at home. I like being outside. The usual stuff.”

A perfectly normal, Oscar-nominated teen movie star then.

• The Lovely Bonesopens next week

Cold comforts: the sweet hereafter on the big screen

What does hell look like? That’s easy. It’s all fire and brimstone. Demons poke you with red-hot pokers and

Sex and the City

plays on a continuous loop.

That image, brewed in the bible, developed by Dante, has appeared in dozens of films. From Bedazzledto Deconstructing Harryto South Park, the fiery underworld (minus the Sex and the City, of course) has become the standard vision of eternal damnation.

But what of heaven? Peter Jackson, director of The Lovely Bones, and Alice Sebold, author of the source novel, would probably balk at the use of the H-word, but Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, above), a virtuous girl, dies and finds herself in a sort of paradise. Sounds like heaven to us. A mess of psychedelic lakes, scarlet skies and prog-rock surrealism, this heaven would surely leave most adults begging for the pitchforks.

A similar, though slightly more painterly class of bliss greeted Robin Williams in the strange 1998 film What Dreams May Come.(Mind you, with Robbo there, any other visitors could reasonably take this as a particularly unforgiving Hades.) The truth is that film-makers have had great difficulty making heaven seem anything other than an almighty bore.

Michael Powell's A Matter of Life and Deathis one of the greatest films ever made, but the cold reception room that awaits recently deceased airmen seems about as inviting as your local butcher's shop.

It's hardly surprising that, as in Ghost,eternal paradise usually waits unseen beyond a vague dazzling light or, as in It's a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, is represented allegorically. You will remember that, at the start of Frank Capra's great film, the angels appear as gossiping stars. Better that than the cover of an Emerson, Lake and Palmer album.