NEW YORK – Saoirse Ronan doesn’t know what day it is.
In recent weeks, the genial Irish actress has crisscrossed continents touting her latest awards hopefuls: “The Outrun” (in theaters Friday), a lyrical drama about a recovering alcoholic, and “Blitz” (in theaters Nov. 1, streaming Nov. 22 on Apple TV+), an intimate World War II epic. Between all the red carpets, festivals and interviews, Ronan is feeling delirious.
“I only just got in from London, so I’m a bit like, ‘Who am I? What am I saying? What are words?’ ” she grins, curled up on a green-room couch in a slouchy black suit. Plane rides have been fueled by “a good dose of escapism. I started watching ‘Hacks’ last night, which I love. I finished ‘The Perfect Couple’ as well – it’s just cracking!”
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It’s Ronan’s first time back on the promotional trail since 2019’s “Little Women.” Although she has appeared in a handful of movies since, their releases were curtailed by COVID-19 and the Hollywood strikes. That’s partly why fans were shocked and delighted when she showed up at last month’s Emmy Awards with her new husband, “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden.
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“Because I’m never out of the house!” Ronan, 30, quips with a hearty laugh. In a way, “it’s true. I haven’t really done this in so long. I’m ready to be out there again.”
Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir, “Outrun” follows a reckless postgrad named Rona (Ronan), who blows up her life in London with hard partying and returns to her family’s coastal home in Scotland to sober up. There, she gets back to nature while also trying to calm the squalls within her mind.
Despite many movies about older male alcoholics, Ronan felt she had rarely seen one from a young woman’s perspective.
“You’re watching someone who is cruel, nasty, a terrible daughter and a bad lover, who has lost all touch with what’s important in life,” Ronan says. “It completely shatters this idea that we still have about a lot of women: When people speak about mothers who have a drinking issue, they always go, ‘Yeah, but what about the kids?’ There’s so much pressure on women still to retain this pure façade.”
To play Rona, it was important for the actress to understand the psychology of addiction. She sat in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where she met people who had been “to hell and back” but still had “a sense of humor about it.” She also spoke extensively with Liptrot, who was hit by a tidal wave of repressed emotion when she got sober at 30.
“Amy said when she was in rehab, she just couldn’t stop crying,” Ronan recalls. “There was a lot that needed to come to the surface.”
Ronan picked up a variety of skills during the remote island shoot, at one point delivering seven newborn sheep. (“I was terrified of killing those baby lambs!”) But that was nothing compared to her anxiety performing for hundreds of people in “Blitz.” Directed by Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”), the movie is set during the Germans’ blitzkrieg bombing campaign of 1940s London. Ronan portrays a resilient single mom named Rita, who puts her musical dreams on hold to help wartime efforts in an arms factory.
On her first day of filming, Ronan was thrown into a lively quickstep number in a roaring dance hall. Rita also sings a variety of jazz standards, and in one early scene, brings a crowd to tears warbling an original tune for her 9-year-old son (Elliott Heffernan).
“I get very nervous singing in front of anyone,” Ronan says. “Steve and I had a lot of discussions about who this woman was and what music meant to her. Music is really how any community makes sense of the nonsensical, so I wanted to tap into that.”
If Ronan earns Oscar nominations for both “Outrun” and “Blitz,” as many predict, she’ll become the youngest-ever double acting nominee. She was first nominated at 13, playing a scheming schoolgirl in 2007’s “Atonement.” She has since picked up three additional nods for her sensitive work with John Crowley (“Brooklyn”) and Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird,” “Little Women”).
"She has this magical presence," says "Outrun" director Nora Fingscheidt. "She's a very fun and easygoing person to be around, but also really passionate."
Although she has been acting professionally for most of her life, Ronan says the 2018 historical drama “Mary Queen of Scots” was the first time she felt fully on her own two feet.
“I'd had the experience of making ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Lady Bird’ that was quite chaotic for me in my head,” Ronan recalls. “I felt very overwhelmed and self-conscious, and luckily, I had two brilliant directors who knew how to use whatever messy, emotional state I was in to make something coherent.”
But to then play someone in “the ultimate position of power, that gave me a bit more confidence that I feel like I'd lost for a while. By the time I made ‘Little Women,’ I felt very in my power. I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes or fall on my face.”
“Mary” was also where she met Lowden, 34, who played the queen's second husband, Lord Darnley. The couple wed this past summer. Lowden read "Outrun" during lockdown, and together they produced the film adaptation. They’re now looking for other scripts to shepherd to the screen – particularly stories set in Scotland, where Lowden is from.
As collaborators, “Jack is a lot calmer than I am. He’s my voice of reason,” Ronan says. “But as a duo, we’ve both been on film sets our whole lives, so we have an appreciation of what we’re asking actors to do. We always want them to feel safe.”
They would like to act together again soon: “Jack didn't want to for a long time, but I've now convinced him that's a great idea. I’d really like to do something together on stage.”
She’s also eager to reunite with Gerwig. Her dream collaboration: an original movie musical in the vein of “Sing Street,” set in the 1990s. “I know she wants to do a musical as well, and that time period is really cool. I tell her all the time that she must put me in everything else. ‘Barbie’ was her only respite.”
At 30, Ronan is feeling a lot more settled. She enjoys somewhere quiet where she can retreat. Her ideal day is "being in the middle of nowhere” with Lowden and their dog, Stella, packing sandwiches for lunch and going for a hike or swim.
"My life has become so much more than just work," Ronan says. "For a long time, that’s all I did; that’s how I met people and made sense of the world." But lately, she has a "beautiful network" of friends who support one another.
“I feel like I’m part of a group, which I never thought I would have,” she says. “I used to think, ‘You’ll never have friends. You’ll never have a partner.’ I was so in my own world, in a lot of ways. So now, to feel like I’ve got a very rich personal and social life – it’s so precious to me.”