Why Saoirse Ronan Wanted to Play an Alcoholic in ‘The Outrun’

Saoirse Ronan remembers it like it was yesterday, the moment she herself was “absolutely shit” thinking she was going to “kill” newborn lambs while helping to deliver them.

“I was terrified… ‘What if I kill the seven lambs?'” she recalls. Weekly entertainmentlaughing through his angst filled memories. “When they finally come out, they’re lifeless, and you essentially have to revive them. You have to rub hard on the side of their body to clear out their waves. So, really, their life is in your hands.”

The four-time Oscar nominee wasn’t thinking about changing her acting career to become an animal midwife. Indeed, it was for work About six months before he begins principal photography on his new film The Outrunshe was stepping into the shoes of her character, Rona, spending time on a farm in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where she retires after a stint in rehab for alcohol addiction and substance abuse. It’s all rooted in real life, based on journalist Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name.

“It was such an amazing way for me to get a feel for Amy’s upbringing,” Ronan says of her time in the Scottish countryside. “That’s something she did, and a lot of young people who (my husband Jack Lowden), and I know who grew up on farms, do it every year. Sometimes, they’ll come back from college and do it. help the his parents with the pair season, as a full-time job for three weeks the need and desire really have to come second.”

It’s a radical change of pace for Rona, a biology student studying in London whose life spirals out of control when she starts partying too hard, a crutch to escape the traumas of her childhood. Her father’s terrifying bipolar episodes often turned violent; Meanwhile, Rona’s mother, now separated from her husband, clings to religion, though her prayers are not enough to help her troubled daughter, who is physically attacked after a wild night on the town .

The film is very personal to Ronan, not only because it is the first film he has produced, but also because of its “universal” theme. “It’s one that everyone has been able to relate to, whether they’ve been through addiction themselves, struggled with their mental health or watched a loved one struggle with alcohol, which is me “, he explains. . “It’s been a particular substance that I’ve hated. I’ve been angry. It’s caused me pain and confusion and resentment. There were feelings I needed to experience, but I finally got to the point where I was so happy and settled in my personal life, and that gave me the strength to fully explore it and open up and understand it instead of being angry about it. So I knew it would be an incredibly cathartic experience to bring something like that to the life and to be choosing to essentially play a version of someone who has hurt me deeply.”

The consequences of Rona’s bad choices affect not only her, but everyone in her world, including her boyfriend, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), with whom she forms an instant and deep connection. But their relationship fractures as she continues to lie and deceive him about her sobriety and mental health. Lowden, “who knows me so well,” he says, originally shared the book with Ronan; she credits him with the recognition that he could “go places he had never been as an actor”. But with that, he also understands that clarity about his own life experiences was necessary to take on the role.

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“There’s no way I could have done it a few years earlier,” he admits. “A lot of girls I know when they’re younger, they’re angrier. I had a temper. I was stubborn. I didn’t have enough clarity to be able to take a character like that and inject everything I used. (from my) transition to this, I wouldn’t realize it was like that before. So I think I needed to get a clearer view of what those elements of a person’s personality are like. I’m able to incorporate them into that character.”

It was also a role that required her to get “as messy as possible,” not just because of those newborn lambs, but because of how Rona’s drunken nights took a toll on her physically. In fact, she says the only aspect of the performance that made her nervous was “the drunken performance,” which she says can “be quite cartoonish at times.” As well as watching Stephen Graham’s performance in the BBC series The Virtueswhere he played an alcoholic who finally has to face repressed memories of his past: “I’ve never seen that portrayed so brilliantly and so honestly before, and it was someone in recovery who gave it to me recommend,” Ronan recalls; he also relied on advice he received from a previous collaborator.

“When you’re drawing from your own experience, you don’t have a clear picture of what you’re like when you’re drunk,” he says. “So there were a few bits of information that I gathered along the way. One was from Greta (Gerwig). When we did Lady Bird(said:) “The last thing a drunk person wants is to look drunk.” So you have to be as specific and precise and articulate what you’re saying as possible, almost exaggerate it so people can tell you’re trying too hard to sound sober.”

But for all of Rona’s problems, her journey to find happiness without the help of the bottle is difficult but worthy, a far cry from the scripts the actress has previously read featuring characters with substance abuse problems who they were more rooted in rebellion than sanity. or personal experience.

“I feel like addiction, especially when you’re following a young person, is either very glamorous or it’s so dark and depressing and hopeless. And so we wanted to try to find that middle ground,” he says. “It’s incredibly hopeful. And there are times when, and you run into this when you talk to people in recovery, they’ve been to hell and back to hell, and so you have to laugh about it. They’ve things. to themselves, to others that are so ridiculous and dark that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, so we wanted to take advantage of that.”

The Outrun it’s in theaters now.