Saoirse Ronan: The Outrun, marriage, learning 'lambing' | Full Interview | The Late Late Show

A woman who has hot-footed it from a red carpet screening of her brilliant new movie, The Outrun, to be with us this evening, a four-time Academy Award nominee. She is one of the greatest actors on planet Earth, and we are delighted to say, welcome home to Saoirse Ronan! Oh, lovely to see you. Lovely to see you too. Straight from your red carpet event tonight. Yeah. Screening off your new movie. Yes. How was that? How's it like to be home? It's so nice to be home. I only got in this morning, and it's just been an amazing response that we've gotten to the film kind of across the board, which we didn't expect, so it's lovely. I mean, you say you didn't expect, but you have to see this woman in this film, because it is brilliant. You are sensational in it, and everything that's coming your way, I mean, you're so, so good. Thank you. That's very nice. Don't see it. It's out next week. So, you star in it, you also produced it. Tell us a little bit about it. Yes, so it's called The Out Run, and it's based on the memoir by Amy Liptrot about her life, about a very specific, chaotic stage in her life where her relationship with alcohol becomes very dangerous and unhealthy. She spirals, she's moved to London years before from the Orkney Islands, and in the process of this chaos, she loses everyone and everything close to her. We then find her, we kind of play around with timelines and stuff a lot, but we then find her in rehab when she's in recovery, and the movie really starts when she's out of that stage, and she unwillingly has to go back home. And it's really about healing during that time and sort of trying to find a way to discover who you are without this substance as a crutch, so. We have a clip here of Saoirse in The Out Run. Sometimes you can feel a vibration in Orkney, a low rumble that takes over the whole island and every part of your body. But there is only so much height any wave can sustain before it comes crashing down. I'm sorry. I can't hear you say that again. I wish you a completely different person. The urge to drink can come out of nowhere. You think you're doing well. Suddenly you want nothing more than a drink. I was watching this during the week, and you have not been in a bad movie. And any movie that you're in, well, no, and everything you're in, you're amazing in. Like, is this the norm for you, to just be... To be amazing all the time. All the time, yeah. Thanks. I mean, the weird thing about what we do is that you kind of have your own experience of it on the inside, and then there's what everyone else sees and what they perceive. And Papa, who plays my boyfriend in the film, we were speaking about this the other day, that there'll be scenes that you do where you're like, I nailed that. I was amazing in that scene. Like, wait until people see me in this. And nobody comments on it when it comes out. And it's probably the worst scene in the whole film. So sometimes your sort of judgment on that can be off. But I think with this, it was such a sort of kind of amalgamation of my character, Amy Liftroth's personality, and our director, Nora's. And so it felt very... It felt like a creation, but it still really felt natural, and it felt like me, which was lovely. It deals with alcohol addiction, and you've said in the past that you've had a front row seat. You've seen people you love go through this. Did that make it harder to play this role, or did it make it easier in a weird way? Both. It just makes it incredibly personal. It gives you a lot of motivation to be as authentic as possible, I suppose. One of the main reasons why I wanted to do this was because I'd seen people I love be affected by this. And when you're on the receiving end of it, there's so much hurt and pain and confusion and anger and resentment, and all these things, because you can't sort of make sense out of why someone would do this to themselves and to you. But I think one of the main reasons why I wanted to make this film was because I finally felt ready in myself to kind of crack that open, to crack the psychology of someone who suffers from this illness open and really understand it for myself. So it was a very cathartic experience for me to go through it. But it was everything. There were moments where it was overwhelming, and then there were other moments where it was really kind of enlightening for me as well. It was your husband Jack Lydon's idea. He gave you the book. Yeah. And he's also a producer on this. We have a little still of you guys here. There you are at the Emmys doing your thing. Jack was nominated for Slow Horses. Yeah, he was. So what was it like working together on this as producers? Great, because you know when you have a personal relationship with someone and you're also in the same field and you respect one another and you've got the same tastes and you kind of expect the best from yourself, to have that other person there believing in you but also pushing you is great. And he was my eyes and ears really when he was on set. He was able to keep an eye on what I was doing. Because so much of it was improv, to have Jack there to just kind of go, you're going down the right path or don't do that. It was great because I just completely trust him. So yeah, great experience. Jack is Scottish, so was there more pressure or less pressure with the Yorkney accent? What did he say when you first tried that on him? Well, because his accent is very different to an Arcadian accent and the Arcadian accent is almost like a Geordie, Nordic accent. It's mad. I had never heard anything like that. And I tried it with the dialect coach and I remember I was downstairs and I was like, oh, I think this is going well. And then she left and he came down and he was like, you're not doing that, are you? Is that what you're going to do? Because it's very difficult, I think, to just nail that accent. And actually Amy Liftrot doesn't sound like that. She's kind of got like an English, Scottish, Arcadian accent. So I mixed it all together and that's what we got. So you had the accent part of it. It was also set in the farm, which you fully embraced. You were very hands on, or should I say hands up? Hands up, hands out. Yeah, there was a bit of lambing going on. There was a lot of lambing going on, which I'd never done before. And we did principal photography for the film in September, but we had to go up to Orkney in April so that it would coincide with lambing season. And, you know, I spent a couple of days on a few farms and the farmers that I was with were like, yeah, so you just, you know, you get in there, you tackle it, you get in there, pull it out, shake it about, rub it a bit, stick some hay up its nose and, you know, that's it. And then just sort of send it on its way. And I was like, right, okay. And then I was sent into the shed and we got ready at like half three, 4am, a couple of days in a row, just so we were ready. And as soon as we saw that a ewe was ready to go, I was just kind of thrown in at the deep end. And I delivered like seven lambs, which I think is really great. And I didn't kill any of them. I mean, I've just realised that you should probably be promoting this film at the Plough Inn this week. I actually should have. You should have been. Honestly, it's like a proper celebration of, like, the farming world and farmers. Like, I have a newfound respect for what they do. Like, they just, they don't sleep, farmers. It's mental. They don't take holidays. They really don't. They just go to the Plough Championships. That's their holiday. What was harder, the lambing or the singing with the seals? I quite liked your seal voice. That was good. Did you like that? I did like that. Yeah. I do that with my dog as well. We howl together. And actually, that wasn't planned. That's something that apparently women traditionally used to do on the islands, they would sing to the seals. And that's kind of where the whole Selkie mythology comes from, this sort of, like, half mermaid seal woman. And so we just tried it out and I would howl at them and they sang back. And it was amazing. We got it all on camera and we were all in floods of tears afterwards because it was just so cool. I saw a wee picture recently which made me smile. This is three of my favourite actors all together there. Please tell me you were plotting something. Please tell me that this was you were having a wee chat and we're going to be seeing you on the big screen soon. Where was this taken? Oh, yeah, this was at Glastonbury. Where is Paul looking? What's he looking at? He's kind of got that sort of next catalogue model. Yeah, he knows he's being photographed. I had just moderated a Q&A for them at Glastonbury for all of us strangers for the film that they did together. Which they were amazing in. Which they were amazing in and Paul is a dear friend of mine and I know Andrew a little bit as well. It was great. It was such a great weekend and Jessie Buckley was there as well and I just remember me, her and Paul at one stage holding each other and being like, I'm so proud of us. It was great. Can I just say that we're so proud of you too. I mean, it's amazing. So you're working with Steve McQueen next, is that right? Yes, I have a film coming out called Blitz and it's about Blitz and it's told from the point of view of a young boy called George and I play his mother and George is played by a brilliant, brilliant new talent called Elliot Heffernan. Yeah, and it was just an absolute privilege to get to work with Steve. It's great. You're heading to Orkney for a screening tomorrow? Yeah, tomorrow we're going back and I haven't been back since we made it. I just hope that the locals like it because it took persuading for them to allow us to film there. Into their world. Yeah, they were like, it better be good if you're going to come in. It's not good. It is absolutely brilliant. You've got to check it out when you can. Saoirse is going to be staying with us but the outrun will be released in cinemas on September the 27th. Give it up for Saoirse Ronan!