Fresh Air - Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

Oscar-winning actor Al Pacino talks with Terry Gross about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother and The Godfather, and why he almost passed on Part II. His new memoir is Sonny Boy.Also, we hear from Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films: The Outrun, about a young woman struggling to get sober, and the World War II drama, Blitz. She spoke with contributor Ann Marie Baldonado about the roles, as well as the most intense on set experience she's ever had — birthing lambs.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today Al Pacino talks about the Godfather and about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother, little money and friends who never made it out alive. He has a new memoir.

Also we hear from Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films, including The Out Run, about a young woman struggling with alcoholism. To try to get sober, she moves back to her family's sheep farm in Scotland. Ronan had to learn new skills for that role. I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a yew and was pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times. Ronan's other film currently in theaters

is the World War II drama Blitz. Our film critic, Justin Chang, will have a review. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com, T's and C's apply. If you listen on the regular to the Fresh Share podcast, then I know you'll love some

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A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at Kresge.org. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Al Pacino. Don't ask me about my business, Kate. Is it true? Don't ask me about my business. No! Well, I'm going to ask Pacino about his business, by which I mean his art. It sounded like a shot to me. It did, I know.

It's you slamming the table. Oh, as long as it's not a gun. I've had enough of those. So I'm going to talk to Pacino about his remarkable performance in the Godfather films and other films. We'll also talk about his remarkable performance in the Godfather films and other films, we'll also talk about his life. He's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy, which is the name his mother used to call him.

It spans his life from the days he grew up in the South Bronx, raised by a single mother with little money, to falling in love with the language of the great playwrights, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shakespeare, getting his start in avant-garde theater in Greenwich Village, surprising himself by becoming a movie star, nearly dying from COVID, and all the ups and downs along the way.

In case you need to be reminded, some of his now classic films include Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Scarface. Although he starred along with Robert De Niro in Godfather 2, they never had a scene together, but they were together in Heat and more recently in Martin Scorsese's film The Irishman. Pacino won an Oscar for his performance in Scent of a Woman. He won an Emmy for his performance in the HBO adaptation of the play Angels in America playing Roy Cohn. He starred in the film adaptation of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross and later later started a Broadway revival of the show, but in a different role.

Al Pacino, welcome to Fresh Air. So exciting to have you here. Thank you, I'm very happy to be here. I want to get to a lot of your life. I want to start by talking about the Godfather. So I want to start with a scene from the first Godfather film. You've begun your transformation into the killer Michael, into the crime family Michael. You know, you start coming home

from the military, you don't want any part of the crime family, but then you're kind of pulled in after your father is shot. So here's a scene from Godfather 1. You've begun your transformation into the hardened Michael. Your father's still alive, but Michael is preparing to take over from him. And you have become so hardened, like you hardly blink in some scenes, including this one. So you're with Mo Green, a Vegas casino owner,

kind of modeled on Bugsy Siegel. And the Corleone family has helped back him. Also in the scene is Michael's older brother, but not very bright brother, Fredo, played by John Cazale, and the family lawyer, Tom, played by Robert Duvall. Mo Green is played by Alex Rocco. You speak first. The Corleone family wants to buy you out. The Corleone family wants to buy me out. The Corleone family wants to buy me out?

No. I buy you out, you don't buy me out. Your casino loses money. Maybe we can do better. You think I'm skimming off the top, Mike? You're unlucky. You damn guineas really make me laugh. I'd do you a favor and take Freddie in when you're having a bad time, and then you try to push me out. Wait a minute. You took Freddie in because the Corleone family bankrolled your casino,

because the Molinari family on the coast guaranteed his safety. Now, we're talking business. Let's talk business. Yeah, let's talk business, Mike. First of all, you're all done. The Corleote family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore. The Godfather is sick, right? You're getting chased out of New York by Barzini and the other families. What do you think is going on here?

You think you can come to my hotel and take over? I talked to Barzini. I can make a deal with him and still keep my hotel. Is that why you slapped my brother around in public? Oh, no, that was nothing, Mike. Now, now, Moe didn't mean nothing, that was nothing, Mike. Now, Moe didn't mean nothing by that. Sure, he flies off the handle once in a while,

but Moe and me were good friends, right, Moe? I got a business to run. I got to kick asses sometimes to make it run right. We had a little argument, Freddie and I, so I had to straighten him out. You straighten my brother out? He was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time. Players couldn't get a drink at the table.

What's wrong with you? I leave for New York tomorrow. Think about a price. Do you know who I am? I'm Mo Green. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders. Wait a minute, Mo. Mo, I got an idea. Tom, Tom, you're the concierge. Now, you can talk to the Don. You can explain.

Just a minute, now. Don is semi-retired, and Mike is in charge of the family business now. You have anything to say, say it to Michael. Mike, you don't come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Mo Green like that! Fredo, you're my older brother and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again.

I just love that scene so much. Yeah, it's interesting on radio too. It works. Does it work though? Yeah, it does interesting on radio too. It works. Just hearing it and not seeing it. Does it work though? Yeah, it does. Yeah. It really does. I was thinking maybe they'll do The Godfather on radio someday.

That's a great idea. Yeah. You know, I interviewed Michael Caine years ago and the great actor Michael Caine and he was saying when you're playing a powerful person, you don't wave your hands around because when you have the power, people are looking at your, your every subtle gesture.

They're trying to read you. They're trying to stay in your good graces and stay safe. And so weak people move their hands around and powerful people don't. When we started talking, you were moving around a lot. So I'm thinking, was it hard for you to be as

still as Michael is when he is exerting his power? Because he knows how to not be still when he needs to, but he can be very still and very opaque and very threatening at the same time. I know. I don't know how I did that. Yeah, I was wondering. I don't know.

To this day, what possessed me. You literally like don't blink in that scene. I think you blink once. How do you do that? Well, I was in the situation, as they say, and I guess it came to me, you know, because things like that happen if you, know stay the course meaning if you are with whoever you are when you're playing it and your instincts are operating I guess I was lucky and I just went in that direction and I didn't do it consciously

so you grew up in the South Bronx. You hung out with a pretty tough crowd. Yeah. And you still like jump from rooftop to rooftop. Oh yeah, we were wild. You threw trash down? More wild. You'd be on the rooftop and throw trash down on Saturday nights to young men with their dates. Yeah, yeah, we would go there to like lettuce at them and stuff.

And they always wanted to kill us us But they couldn't catch us We would do it on occasion on occasion. We didn't do it a lot. But when we did I remember it Where was the fun in doing that? God only knows because somebody else was doing it. That's what it was something we were all doing together like we were in an orchestra, We just would go up there and like part of growing up where I was was being chased. That was the fun of everything. Chased by who? Well anybody that we screwed around with.

And you know that's how we did did we didn't only do these things I'm sorry, they stand out from time to time, but I remember my childhood is running at least three of your closest friends Died of drug related deaths with a heroin overdose. Yes How did you imagine managed to avoid that yourself? Well, I believe my mother my mother How do you imagine you managed to avoid that yourself? Well I believe my mother, my mother just was there and she just, no way. You know, we, it was just territory there in the South Bronx. We were, they were calling me late at night on a school night, come on out, you know, who knows what

they were going to be doing? I think it's in the book too. And they call up and my mother just said no. And I was so angry with her. You know, all these things come back to you you finally I remember when 30 years ago I'm in my house in New York and I'm shaving to go to an event that's I'm getting on an award of some sort and I I was thinking about what am I gonna say and then it just dawns on me I'm shaving you always see my face in the mirror and I thought you're here because of your mother what's what's the matter with you I said it's true so I had this realization at age 52 that my mother was everything you know how old was she when she died did she get to see you be successful? No. My grandfather and my mother saw me. They both died before I became successful.

Your parents divorced before you were two. When you were around eight months old, you were taken away from your mother and no one I think I was a year and a half and I stayed with them for eight months stay with your grandparents yeah my father's my father's mother and father and you say at least family and not a foster home why were you taken away from your mother? I would imagine, of course I'm not very clear on that. I learned that after my mother had died from relatives that came to see me on Broadway. And I just, it was just a revelation. And then a, you know, a bulb went off in my head and I thought, uh-oh, there it is. That's why I do some of the things I do.

Like what? I don't know. Like the behavior I had and the way I was and life and that started me. I went into therapy for the next 40 years. After finding out about that? Trauma. It's just trauma, you know. Trauma. We all have trauma. Trauma you didn't even know you had. It's interesting. Yeah, I didn't. But that doesn't mean it didn't affect you. Of course. So I know that my grandmother on my father's side raised me to the point where my grandmother and grandfather

she had visitation rights in the divorce papers, she found out, and she was simply the most wonderful person. I think I went there when I was a year and a half. That's tough stuff. So we need to take a short break here. So let me introduce you. My guest is Al Pacino and he's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy. We'll hear more of our interview after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Hi, this is Molly Seabee Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air.

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or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR, vital international stories every day. Support for this podcast comes from the Neubauer Family Foundation, supporting WHYY's Fresh Air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terri Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Al Pacino. He has a new memoir called Sunny Boy. When we left off, we were talking about growing up in the South Bronx with his grandparents and single mother.

There was a point where your mother was crying and kissing you all over, and you were very young and you weren't understanding what's up, why is this happening? And then you return home and you see there's an ambulance in front of the building and it's your mother who they're there for was that did she attempt to die by suicide yeah yes how old are you I was about six did

it register on you what had happened did you comprehend it I couldn't quite at six. I knew something was up and I was I was you know, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather and my mother and I Remember they're all sitting at a table. I think this was after the war So my uncle would be there my my aunt would be there Everybody was talking about what to do And I remember sitting there, and they let me sit there So I didn't quite understand what they were saying, but I knew it was a serious thing

and But you know she came back Leaving on seeing her in the street somebody said to me as I'm running to see the ambulance, you know, we rarely saw ambulances coming on our block and I saw it. And there she was on a stretcher going into the ambulance and I thought, because I couldn't believe it was my mother. These things don't happen to my mother, you know. And it was her, because they said,

hey, I hear it's your mother, Sonny. It's your mother, mother. My mother? I said, no, nothing happens to my mother. And I remember that feeling. And then the shock is seeing her in that. It was, as they say, surreal. But it's clear in my memory.

Yeah. She must have loved movies, because she took you to the movies when you were little. Oh, she loved everything. My mother was very smart. She read and had played the piano. I mean, very very poor of course but she was very very intelligent and my mother decided to go to the theater and take me to Broadway

shows among other things but she loved Cat on a Hot Tooth Roof and those kind of shows she was very into... She took you to see when you were five, she took you to see The Lost Weekend starring Raymond Landis. It's like raging alcoholic. It's a great film but he, you know, he gets very self-destructive and I don't know, you were five and then you started acting out those scenes at home. Yeah, I started acting out the scenes. Yeah, I would act all the time. When mom took me to the movies, I'd come back. Because we lived alone and there was nobody there to play with.

So I'd act out all the parts in the films I saw. And I acted out The Lost Weekend and I showed it to my mother. My mother said, oh, what is this? And they started laughing. And then she'd show it to the families. Or when I was somewhere they'd say, sorry, do the Lost Weekend. And I would do the Lost Weekend. And I never understood why they would laugh at someone in this predicament because it's where he's searching for a bottle of booze that he hid somewhere when he was sober and now he couldn't find it. And when he was drunk

and now he can't find it and he goes crazy opening drawers and so on. I love doing that. And they would be laughing and I would say, why are they laughing to myself? You understand now? I sort of do. It's kind of funny to see a five-year-old playing an adult in crisis. Yeah, an adult in crisis. He was totally disillusioned. With real commitment, I was right there. You became an actor. Yes. You were gonna turn down the role in Godfather 2. Well, the only reason I stayed in Godfather 1 is, I mean, you would quit if you were in it when everybody's over there giggling at what you're doing, you know, and the whispers

on the set. I said, I don't want to be here. I said, I don't like being around people who don't want me around. I've never been that way. I just sort of shy off. I don't want to be there. But for Godfather 2, I mean, Godfather 1 was already a success. Oh yeah, Godfather 2. Mario Puzo comes up to you with the script that he'd written and he said, this is crap. Yes, he said, I just want you to know before you read it, they want to do it, this is crap. And I read it and he was right. It was it was not good. And so I I just

Thought well I and they kept Upping the ante they kept giving me more money But I kept saying but I don't want to do it and then finally when Francis because Francis wasn't on the project so Francis got on the project and He cut them off at about 700,000. He said, no, he doesn't want money. He wants a good script. Stop giving him the money.

Wait, so was the script rewritten? Yeah, well, he wrote it. This is a great script. I know, it was a great script. Coppola rewrote the script? Yeah, with Mario and partially it was almost done, but me and Charlie still didn't think certain things were right. So me and Charlie went out to San Francisco and we said, let's see if we can do this,

you know, and Francis did really a great job and he just did it and we just worked with him a little bit. And I remember thinking that was a very memorable moment. So then it was done, I said yes. And it was a tough shoot for me because I just don't know. It was a time in my life where it's hard to describe it without lying down on the couch. It was hard because of your personal life or? Of course, everything. It was hard because of your personal life or of course everything I Guess where my drinking had gotten to or all of it. I I found myself in a

In a state of mind that was Difficult I took valium and remember those days or you don't you're too young. Valium? Valium. I remember those days. Do you remember Valium. Remember those days? Oh, you don't. Valium? Valium. I remember those days. Do you remember Valium? Of course. Oh. I didn't take it, but certainly knew all about it. I mean, it was everywhere. It was like there were jokes about it and dramas about it.

It was like one of the first really popular anti-anxiety medications. Yeah. I took that and drag at the same time, which is a no-no. That's yeah That is so I was a lucky boy. How did you manage to get through the film? You're so good at it I mean, you're so good in the film. How did you manage? Well, that's probably why I was so But thank you Mentioning that it's it just went very far. I went very far into it because I always thought by the end of Godfather one it looked like Michael was starting to become encased in whatever this thing took over him. You know, this place he went to to

survive, to save his father's life and to continue his life. And it was a tough one. So, you know, because like I sort of see in Godfather 2, a man who's cutting himself off. He's had to emotionally shut down to do what he felt he needed to do. Yes, yes. And become a monster. Yes. Did that have an impact on you, having to emotionally shut down for the role? It had to. It had to.

I've learned since when you play situations and people that are caught up in that web, it's best to be happy every day, sing cheery songs and then go on. It's actually true. I've known some actors, very good actors, who just say, nope, nope, I'm just doing my thing. They could be dancing and singing

and then just go right to it. And at that time, I would do it now, of course I do it. Yeah, the more difficult the role, the more, you know, and the more demanding or whatever, you go the other way in your preparation. Because you got it all in you now. I mean, this, you know, I think just through experience The saying goes, time keeps me green. You know, because when you are acting, or that thing that we do, and after a while, it gets there into the body and into the... it just... it becomes part of you and you don't have to act anymore. Thank you so much for talking with us.

Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for all your great films, all your great performances and for the book. Thank you very much. Thank you. Be well. You too. Al Pacino's new memoir is called Sunny Boy. In the new World War II drama Blitz, Saoirse Ronan plays a London factory worker trying to protect her young son as German bombs fall across the city. It's the latest movie written and directed by the English filmmaker Steve McQueen.

Blitz is playing in theaters and begins streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 22nd. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. From Empire of the Sun to Au Revoir les Enfants, there's been no shortage of films that show us World War II through the eyes of a child. Youthful innocence can magnify the horrors of war, as it does in shattering dramas like Come and See or the animated Grave of the Fireflies. But then there's Hope and Glory, John Borman's 1987 portrait of his boyhood years during the Blitz. It's the rare film to treat life during wartime with a buoyant

sense of adventure. The wonderful new movie Blitz is a sadder, more somber look at a time when German bombs rain down on London. The filmmaker Steve McQueen plunges us right into the chaos and devastation, the falling bombs, the burning buildings, and the utter randomness of death and survival. But Blitz, while not exactly a movie for children, is nonetheless a story about a child. And it has powerful moments of wonderment, humor, and even joy. It follows a nine-year-old boy named George, played by the captivating newcomer Elliot Heffernan. George, played by the captivating newcomer, Elliot Heffernan. It's 1940, and as the nightly air raids grow worse and worse, George's mother, Rita, played by a luminous Sir Sheronan,

decides to send him to the countryside, where hundreds of thousands of English children were sent during the war. But George doesn't want to go. Why can't you come with me? Sweetheart, I told you it's an adventure for children only. Growing up's not allowed. But it's gonna be great. You're gonna make new friends. My friends are here. Yeah, well, you play games in the countryside. That'd be nice.

There'll be cows and there'll be horses and sheep. But they smell. I want to stay with you. Yeah, I know. It's only until all this is over and then the schools will open again and life will get back to normal. I promise. Please, Mum.

Don't send me away. It may sound like a familiar, even cliché, scene, but beneath the stiff upper lip conventions, McQueen is up to something pointed and even subversive. George is the son of a white mother and a black father, a Grenadian immigrant who was unjustly deported years earlier, as we see in a harrowing flashback. George never knew his dad, but he knows first-hand the racism his dad experienced.

That's why he can't bear to be separated from his mother and his grandfather, played by the great singer and songwriter Paul Weller. And so not long into his journey, George leaps from the train and heads back to London. Blitz follows him from one peril to the next. There are sweet moments of uplift, like when he rides the rails with three boys, also making their way home. The story also takes some darkly Dickensian turns, like when George meets a gang of robbers who are exploiting the Blitz to their crooked advantage.

In one moving chapter, George is aided by a friendly air raid warden named Ife, nicely played by Benjamin Clementine. Ife is a Nigerian immigrant, and almost certainly the first black man George has ever seen in a position of authority. It's here that the profundity of McQueen's vision comes into focus. He may be working in a more classical mode than he did in historical dramas like Hunger

and Twelve Years a Slave, but there's something quietly radical about his perspective. He's showing us an England that was more racially diverse and more racially divided than most movies of the period ever acknowledged. At times Blitz plays like a prequel to McQueen's 2020 anthology series Small Acts, a vibrant portrait of the West Indian community of London where he grew up. It also has some overlap with Occupied City, his 2023 documentary about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, a very different film about a city under siege. Race isn't the only thing on McQueen's mind. He also salutes the crucial role women played in the war effort, women like George's, Rita, who by day works in a munitions factory,

and by night volunteers in an underground shelter. Once Rita learns that George is lost in London, Blitz becomes the heartrending tale of a mother and child trying to find each other across a bombed out landscape. A smoky ruin in Adam Stockhausen's brilliant production design. For all these stark and apocalyptic images, the London we see in Blitz also pulses with life. The use of music throughout is inspired, and I don't just mean Hans Zimmer's brooding

score. McQueen guides us into a dance hall, where black musicians perform for white partygoers, and through a busy pub where George's granddad tickles the ivories. One terrific scene unfolds on the factory floor, where Rita, a gifted singer, cheers up the crowd with a song, an original tune as it happens, co-written by McQueen and Nicholas Britell. The music in these moments never feels like just a diversion. These are songs of defiance, and in them you can hear a nation's very will to survive. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan.

She also stars on the new film The Outrun about a young alcoholic trying to get sober. Coming up, we'll talk with Saoirse Ronan. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR app. With a mix of on-demand news, stories from this station, and your favorite podcast, you can relax without shutting off your brain. Download the NPR app today. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Our next guest is four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. We just heard about her film Blitz. She also stars in the new film The

Outrun. She starred in the earlier films Little Women, Lady Bird, and Atonement. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne Marie Boldenado. Saoirse Ronan's performance as a precocious young girl in the war drama Atonement got her her first Oscar nomination. She was only 13 at the time, and three other nominations were to follow. One for the 2015 film Brooklyn,

about a young Irish woman in the 1950s, torn between her new life in the U.S. and her homeland. She got two nominations for the film she made with Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird in 2017 and Little Women in 2019. Her other movies include The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lovely Bones, and Mary Queen of Scots. This fall she has two films in theaters. In the movie Blitz by the director Steve McQueen, Ronan plays a mother living in London with her young son and elderly father, all trying to survive the German bombing campaigns during World War II. And in the film The Outrun, she plays a young woman whose life is derailed because of her addiction to alcohol. It's based on the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot.

Ronan plays Rona, a dramatized version of Liptrot, who's a graduate student living in London when her drinking takes over. She tries different things to get sober, going to rehab, moving back to Orkney, Scotland, to help her bipolar dad tend to his goat farm, and then to an even more remote island off the coast of Scotland, where she spends most of her time alone

working on nature conservation. Here's a scene from the Out Run. Rona is waking up after a bad night of drinking. She doesn't even remember what she's done, but both she and her boyfriend, played by Papa Essie-a-do, are both hurt and bandaged up. He's had enough and wants to break up. What did I do last night? Do you not remember? What did I do last night? You don't remember.

Danan, I'm so sorry. Whatever I did. I'm not drinking anymore. I'm sorry. And I'm so tired of hearing you say that. I can't hear you say that again. What do you mean? I don't even recognise you anymore. But I wish you were a completely different person. Don't say that.

I can't do this. What do you mean you can't do this? I just can't do this. Did I do that to you? Shh. I'll never do that again, right? Whatever I did, I'll never do it again. I'm never gonna drink again.

I promise you, right? Because I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose you. Please don't go. I love you. He's still gone. I love you. Sarah Sheronan, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. I know you read the book The Outrun and loved it so much that you wanted to make it into a movie, produce it, and play the main character. What was it about the book that you found so compelling?

I think it was the first time that I had been exposed to an addiction story that didn't feel like it was all doom and gloom. It allowed me to get to know the whole person. Amy Liptrot wasn't defining herself by her addiction to alcohol, but was acknowledging that it played a huge part in her life, in the destruction of her life for a long time. I was really drawn to the fact that we would follow a young woman as she struggles with alcoholism. I think that usually when you think of that as a story, you would imagine probably a man, you know, middle-aged or a woman who's going through a divorce or she's lost her family or, you know, there's a sort of domestic sort of element to it. And the fact that we were going to follow someone who, as bad as

it sounds, on paper shouldn't have this addiction and yet does just reminds us of how this is something that can affect everyone. Now you said that there were parts of this story of dealing with it was scary for you because it was too private. Something that you hadn't completely explored before. And I'm not sure if you mean like in the film or in your life or both. What was so scary to you about it? It is a particular topic that is very personal to me, it's an addiction that I haven't struggled with myself, but I've watched people very close to me struggle with it. And some of them have seen the light eventually and others have not. And that's incredibly painful.

And I think as someone on the receiving end of that, there's a lot of anger and resentment that is born out of that experience because you're not going through it yourself. You don't understand or I certainly didn't understand really how addiction works. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say, but I think unless you actually sit down to examine the effect that a substance is having on your brain, you don't really take the time to unpick it because you're so hurt by it and you're so hurt that it has been chosen over you. And so I think I spent a lot of my life carrying that around with me. But it, but it was, yeah, it was scary.

It was scary to hone in on this. It just brought up a lot of pain for me, I suppose. In this movie, you do some interesting things. You know, your character grew up on a sheep farm and at one point your character puts her hands in a sheep to get to help birth a lamb and at another point you know you're in what seems like completely freezing water and the character is connecting with seals who are swimming there and it's kind of shocks her into her body so you

physically did those things what was that like? I love to swim in cold water. I've been doing that since I was a kid. So that's like my happy place. That was not a challenge at all. That if anything, it was a challenge to pretend that it was freezing cold, like so cold that I just wouldn't get in. So I'm that person. Am I a sheep farmer? I am not. And I was not before this experience. However, since then, I have, like, gotten in touch with every farmer I know in, like, Ireland and Scotland and been like, let me know when lambing season starts, guys, because I'm already.

It was the most insane experience I've ever had on a film and just in life. It's so intense. And we actually shot the lambing sequence before we started principal photography. So it was probably about five months prior to us starting the production, because lambing season in the Orkney Islands starts in like sort of April time. It's a little bit later than the mainland. And then I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a you, pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times. And I was sort of coached by different farmers that I met in Orkney and they were incredible.

But the really interesting and really humbling thing about it was that sheep don't sort of stick to a schedule necessarily and so we had to bend our shooting schedule to nature. I would get ready at like 4am, we'd go into the shed and we would just wait and the camera would be ready to go and sometimes you would go in and there wouldn't be a you that would go into labour that day, other times they would. And as soon as they did, Kyle, our farming consultant, was just like, okay, go get her, go tackle that you to the ground. And he would coach me through it from off camera. And it was just the most amazing experience. So that really sort of set the tone for the rest of the movie, I

think. Now, the other movie that you have coming out this fall is Blitz by the director Steve McQueen. It's about a mother during Germany's bombing attacks on London in World War II. She's worried about her son's safety, so she follows the government's recommendation, which is to send all children to the countryside to avoid the bombing campaigns. Now, I read that a photo that Steve McQueen saw while researching another project

ended up inspiring this film. Is that your understanding of how it came about? Yeah he was doing research and came across this incredible photograph of this little black boy on a train station platform on his own and he had a little cap on and his little suitcase and I think, I'm assuming a tag around his neck and Steve was of course very intrigued by him and wanted to know what his story was and so that's where the inspiration for Blitz came from. And what drew you to the film? I'll say that it's a different kind of World War II film that focuses on those left in London during the bombing attacks.

Yeah, I mean that's really the reason why I wanted to get involved. I of course wanted to make a film with Steve McQueen. I'm such a huge fan of his and I've wanted to work with him for years. I of course knew that it was going to be a sort of fresh take on a World War II British epic, but I didn't know exactly how and so when he started to explain to me that it would follow a mixed race little boy who he'd found already at that stage, I think Gelliet had already been cast, and that it would really focus on the people left behind essentially, the ones who had to keep society going, which was the

women, children and older folk. It just piqued my interest straight away and knowing that my sort of role that I would play would be in honoring the mother child relationship and was was just something that I couldn't really. Pass up I'm incredibly close to my own mother and we've spent a lot of time together where it was just me and her so that dynamic is something that I've always wanted to bring to life on screen and getting to do it with this Sort of backdrop was just incredibly exciting You were born in New York City in the Bronx your parents had moved to the US from Ireland in the 1980s why did they come to New York and It was a rite of passage, really. They left school when they were 15, 16.

They needed to get to work. There was more work in the UK and America than there was at home. And I think a couple of their friends had gone over ahead of them, had gotten a bit of work and had something lined up for dad. So he went over and then mam followed a couple of months later. They lived there, they experienced life outside of Ireland. It was really hard.

They didn't have anything. They didn't have money. They, you know, she had me and of course couldn't afford health insurance. And so it was actually, I think it was like, it was a Catholic church charity or something that helped her a lot when she when she had me and the point being that she sort of really have to rely on and other sources in order to live and but it was it was tough you know my my dad started out in construction. started out in construction. He eventually became a bartender and was discovered by a bunch of actors from the Irish Rep in the pub that he worked in. He auditioned for a play, he got the part, he became an actor, a theatre actor. Mam was a cleaner and then eventually nannied for different families and took me to work with her. And I think at a certain point, my mom in particular realized that this just wasn't the life that she wanted me to have. You know, if you want to live comfortably in New York, and I would say London as well,

you need money. And they just didn't have that. So they went home where they had, you know, a proper support system. And it was your dad's acting career that brought you back to Ireland. Is that right? Yeah, it was. So it was a combination of them just needing more support, I suppose, from their family, and them wanting me to, you know, have a garden and fresh air to wanting me to have a garden and fresh air to grow up with and in. But also it was it was a time where the Irish film industry was sort of starting to boom a little bit because of filmmakers like Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan and just a lot of American

filmmakers who were becoming really fascinated with Ireland either because of their heritage or Irish playwrights that they'd grown up reading. And yeah, and so work took him home. So we we went back. Now, you're very good at doing accents. You know, you're Scottish in the Out Run, English in Blitz. You do a specific regional accent in Brooklyn and of course you do an American accent in the films Lady Bird and Little Women. I was wondering if you think about living, that living in the U.S. as a baby helped you with your American accent. So it just makes

me think about language at that early age and kind of like how like weird and malleable it could be. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not too similar to being bilingual. Like you know, you're so open to everything. And so if you're exposed to lots of different sounds, then I guess your ear sort of remains open to that and your brain is tuned into that from quite an early age. So yeah, I think, you know, I was, as I said, I was mainly around a lot of Irish people in New York, but of course heard a

lot of American accents too and was also brought up on American TV like a lot of kids are. And, you know, a lot of my friends nowadays will say that their kids, whether they're in London or Dublin or Glasgow or New Zealand, you know, were so influenced by America that actually a lot of their kids are kind of brilliant at doing the American accent just through like Dora the Explorer or whatever, whatever they're watching out Paw Patrol. So, yes, so I guess I was no different. But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, as important as accents have always been for me, I'm actually really, really keen to just use my own now.

And I remember Andrew Scott saying that, that, you know, he spent so long as we all do, as a lot of Irish and Celts do in particular and Northern English do, where we have to be able to do accents because there just aren't enough parts for people who sound the way we sound. So you have to be able to talk like this or have an American accent, which is, you know, frustrating. But he said that for a long time, he really indulged in sounding different from himself and that that's sort of part of what

acting is. And I felt exactly the same way. And then at a certain point in your life, you kind of think, oh, I'm actually not that bad and I'm not completely uninteresting and I'd quite like to explore acting without having to think about the accent. So I've kind of gone through a period over the last few years where I've really enjoyed using my own. Well, Saoirse Ronan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was lovely. Saoirse Ronan spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. Her films The Outrun and Blitz are in theaters. Blitz will start streaming on Apple TV Plus November 22nd.

Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Stanaszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Annemarie Bodinato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Cezanne Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C. Vinesper and Sabrina Seward.

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