Same red carpet but home soil makes difference for young star

RED CARPETS, interviews and autographs have become a regular part of life for teenage actor Saoirse Ronan.

The 15-year-old came to The Savoy Cinema in Dublin last night for the premiere of her latest film, The Lovely Bones, and amid scores of photographs, fans and journalists she displayed the kind of poise and presence you'd expect from her more experienced co-stars Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg.

A busy promotional tour has seen the youngster travel to Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Paris, London and coast-to-coast in the US over the last few weeks, but she said last night’s show was the one she had been waiting for.

“It’s really important for me because I feel like Dublin is my home,” she said.

“My family are from here, a lot of my friends are from here and it’s my home country. So to have Irish people around me and to share a movie I care so much about with them is really wonderful.”

The film, an adaptation of the 2002 Alice Sebold novel of the same name, directed by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Ringsfame, sees Ronan playing Susie, a 14-year-old who is murdered early on in the story but continues to take part from beyond the grave as it unfolds.

“It’s not really any different because I never really thought of Susie as a dead girl,” Ronan said. “She was someone who was killed but her spirit most certainly was not dead.”

Looking on from the sidelines as she posed for photographs and made her way through television interviews was Saoirse’s father Paul, an actor himself, who said he was delighted his daughter has been able to deal with her rise to fame. “This is normal for her now,” he said. “It depends on what you do, where you live and who you are but she’s become a famous actor now and this is normal. You travel around and work on films and then you go home before it starts again.”

Mr Ronan said, despite last night being a normal night, his daughter still loves to “do teenage type things” with friends in Carlow, New York, Wellington or wherever she may be.

“I like to hang out with my friends, play with my dog, listen to music, watch movies, read and doing normal things like that,” Saoirse said.