‘Brooklyn’ star Saoirse Ronan says the 1950s set film is surprisingly progressive

Saoirse Ronan (Photo from saoirse-ronan.com)

TORONTO – Saoirse Ronan’s new film, “Brooklyn,” hit close to home for the young actress- both her homes.

The romantic drama captures a bright young girl who leaves her tight-knit family in post-war Ireland in search of opportunity in 1950s New York. Ronan herself, meanwhile, was born in New York City to Irish immigrant parents, then moved back to County Carlow, Ireland at age three.

“My dad told me things that he did for work,” she said brightly during September’s Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie bowed.

“He worked at the Waldorf Astoria, he worked in construction and did loads of different things.

He literally shovelled (expletive) at one stage into a wheelbarrow on an elevator shaft because the sewage pipes had broken. There was another time he was on a construction site and they wouldn’t give him ear protection, so he put cigarette butts in his ears. He has tinnitus now.

“My mom was a nanny and… she carried prams and two other kids up seven flights of stairs in the summertime.”

“To hear all of that from them,” continued the 21-year-old, “it really makes me appreciate that no matter how homesick I was when I moved away, it was nothing compared to that.”

In fact, when Ronan moved to New York as an adolescent after finding great success – and an Oscar nomination – with “Atonement,” the city brought the same sense of wondrous liberty that so enchanted her character.

Her onscreen counterpart, Eilis, quickly finds her footing in the big city, blossoming in her job at a tony department store and fluttering into a sweet love affair with an adoring Italian plumber, played by Emory Cohen.

Eventually, however, she feels the pull of her homeland and is forced to make a decision between two tantalizing options.

For Ronan, she actually found it curious that a film based some 60 years in the past could be more progressive than many present-set scripts that come her way.

“There’s so many female roles that are just so basic and so boring,” she said. “When (Eilis) goes to school, she’s the only woman there… and she’s very much got control over the relationship she’s in, and she starts to really have a sense of who she is after a while in New York.”

“And, more than anything, to see so many scenes where it just consists of interaction between women where – as much as I love watching male actors – there’s no man necessarily as a crutch for them.”

Directed by John Crowley and adapted by British writer Nick Hornby from a Colm Toibin novel, “Brooklyn” inspired some awards tittering during its TIFF unveil.

“I’m delighted people are talking about it like that, and even the fact that we’re said in the same breath as the O word or any other award,” said Ronan.

“But even if it were all to end tomorrow, the reception we’ve gotten to it so far has been amazing.”

“Brooklyn” opens Friday in Toronto and Vancouver, on Dec. 11 in Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria, and on Dec. 18 in Montreal.