Best Of: Al Pacino / Saoirse Ronan
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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 Outrun, 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. And I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times. Ronan's other film currently in theatres is the World War II drama Blitz. Our film critic Justin Chang will have a review. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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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. Ha ha ha!

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 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, to the age of 20.

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 II, they never had a scene together, but they were together in Heat and more recently in Martin Scorsese's film The Irishman.

Al Pacino, welcome to Fresh Air. So exciting to have you here. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. I want to thank you for having me.

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. 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 up.

Also on 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. 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 do you a favor and take Freddy in when you're having a bad time, and then you try to push me out. Wait a minute.

You took Freddy 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, mate. First of all, you're all done. The Corleone 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, Mo didn't mean nothing by that. Sure, he flies off the handle once in a while, but Mo and me were good friends, right, Mo? I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right. We had a little argument, Freddie and I, so I had to straighten him out. You straightened 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 Moe Green. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders. Wait a minute, Moe. Moe, I get an idea. Tom, Tom, you're the conciliary. Now you can talk to the Don, you can explain. Just a minute. Don is semi-retired and Mike is in charge of the family business now. If you have anything to say, say it to Michael. You don't come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Moe 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. 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, the great actor Michael Caine, and he was saying when you're playing a powerful person, you don't wave your hands around because you're

When you have the power, people are looking at 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. 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 blinked once. How do you do that? Well, I was in the situation, as they say, and I guess it—

It came to me, you know, because things like that happen if you, 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. 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 used to, 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 and throw, like, lettuce at them and stuff. And they always wanted to kill 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 everybody else was doing it. 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? By anybody that we screwed around with.

And, you know, that's how we did. We didn't only do these things. I'm sorry. They stand out from time to time. But I remember my childhood as running. At least three of your closest friends died of drug-related deaths with a heroin overdose. Yeah. How did you manage to avoid that yourself? Well, I believe my mother. My mother just died.

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. I remember when 30 years ago, I'm in my house in New York, and I'm shaving to go to an event that I'm getting an award of some sort. And I was thinking about, what am I going to 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 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 all 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. No. I think I was a year and a half, and I stayed with them for eight months. Stayed with your grandparents. My father's mother and father. And you say at least you were placed with 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 it was just a revelation. And then 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 in life and...

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. That'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, that 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 reintroduce 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. ♪

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With the lowest prices for over 30 years, find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine & More. Visit TotalWine.com to learn more. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry 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 were 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, you know, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather and my mother. I remember them all sitting at a table. I think this was after the war, so my uncle would be there, 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. But, you know, she came back. That must have been traumatizing, too. But seeing her in the streets, 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. My mother? I said, no, nothing happens to my mother. And I remember that feeling. And then the shock of 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... Oh, she loved everything. My mother was very smart. She read and played the piano. I mean, 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 Tune 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 Ray Moland as this 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 she started laughing. And then she'd show it to the families. Or when I was somewhere, they'd say,

Sonny, 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 when he was drunk. And now he can't find it. And he goes crazy opening drawers and so on. I loved doing that. And they would be laughing and I would say, why are they laughing to myself? Do 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's totally disillusioned. With real commitment, I was right there. Well, you became an actor. Yes.

You were going to 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, and this is crap. And I read it, and he was right. It was not good.

And so I just thought, well, and they kept upping the ante. They kept giving me more money. And 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. Oh. 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 said,

did really a great job. 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. I guess where my drinking had gotten to or all of it. I found myself in a state of mind that was difficult. I took Valium. Remember those days? Oh, you don't. You're too young. Valium? Valium. I remember those days. Do you remember Valium? Of course.

I didn't take it, but I certainly knew all about it. I mean, it was everywhere. 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 drank at the same time, which is a no-no. 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 for mentioning that. It just went very far. I went very far into it because I always thought by the end of Godfather I, it looked like Michael was starting to become encased in whatever this thing took over him, 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 I sort of see in Godfather II 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, you know, I think just through experience and doing this

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 rained 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. It's 1940, and as the nightly air raids grow worse and worse, George's mother, Rita, played by a luminous Saoirse Ronan, 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. Grown-ups not allowed. But it's gonna be great. You're gonna make new friends. My friends are here. Yeah, well, you'll play games in the countryside. That'd be nice. There'll be cows and there'll be horses. 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 cliche, 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 firsthand 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 Axe, 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 mom, 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 heart-rending 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 Bertel. 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 in 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.

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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 best-selling memoir by Amy Liptrott.

Ronan plays Rona, a dramatized version of Lip Trot, 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 outrun. 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? You don't remember. Dana, I'm so sorry. Whatever I did, I'm not drinking anymore. I'm sorry. Rona, 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 recognize you anymore. 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? I'll never do that again, right? Whatever I did, I'll never do it again. I'm never going to drink again. I promise you, right? Because I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose you. I love you. Saoirse Ronan, 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's

It has been chosen over you. And so I think I spent a lot of my life carrying that around with me. 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 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. 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 ready. 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 Island 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 ewe and was 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 4 a.m.

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 ewe that would go into labour that day. Other times they would. And as soon as they did, Kyle, our farming consultant, was just like, OK, go get her. Go tackle that ewe to the ground. And he would coach me through it from off camera. And it was amazing.

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 on

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 Elliot 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 honouring 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 U.S. from Ireland in the 1980s. Why did they come to New York? It was a rite of passage, really. They left school when they were 15, 16. They left.

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. And

And yeah, and they just, they lived there, they experienced life outside of Ireland and

And, you know, 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 had me. The point being that she,

sort of really had to rely on other sources in order to live. But it was tough, you know, my dad 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.

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're, 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.

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 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

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 Outrun, 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...

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 weird and malleable it could be.

Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not dissimilar 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 London,

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 watch now, Paw Patrol. So, yeah, so I guess I was no different. But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, you

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 everyone.

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+, November 22nd. ♪

Thank you.

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