Saoirse Ronan Just Wants to Play a Bond Villain

Thirty-year-old Saoirse Ronan has already played a child assassin, an alien, and Lady Macbeth—and has also been nominated for four Oscars, for her work in Atonement, Brooklyn, and as Greta Gerwig’s muse in both Lady Bird and Little Women.

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Ronan has two more films coming out this season. First, there’s The Outrun, which opened October 4 and stars Ronan as an addict who travels to her hometown on the Orkney Islands as she seeks recovery and solace. She’ll next be seen in Steve McQueen’s Blitz, playing a young mother whose son goes missing during the WWII bombings in London. Out November 1, Blitz is an emotional historical epic with Ronan’s performance at its heart.

The projects couldn’t be more different, but they each show Ronan’s ability to bring vulnerability to all her characters—and to try new things with each role. For The Outrun, which Ronan also produced, she learned how to deliver lambs—aka “lambing”—an experience she describes as terrifying but miraculous. “It was really beautiful,” she tells Little Gold Men, “and I think more than anything else, it just kind of reminded me of that cyclical nature of the animal world, human world—birth, life—how kind of clinical it can be, and at the same time really beautiful and spiritual and heartwarming.” In Blitz, meanwhile, Ronan performs an original song after her character is recruited to sing something inspiring over the radio.

Ronan has accomplished a great deal in her two decades of being a performer, but she’s still got her eye on some big goals. She hopes to direct soon, and she also wants to take on a villain role—specifically as a Bond villain. Here, she talks to Little Gold Men about the directors she still wants to work with, how The Outrun taught her forgiveness, and what she remembers about her very first Oscar ceremony at the age of 13.

Vanity Fair: The Outrun must have been such a demanding experience, because you’re in almost every scene of that movie, and you were also producing it. How did you handle that?

Saoirse Ronan: I feel like if anything, it gave me a bit of a pep in my step. There was something about the energy needed to get the job done and to kind of successfully embody both of these roles that I think kept me very sharp and alert. I weirdly was very grateful to have another role on set that wasn’t completely consumed by the project, and wasn’t consumed by the drama that needed to be created on screen—to also have to put on a practical hat when I was off set was really helpful for me to retain a kind of healthy relationship with the work.

As for the role, how did you approach playing an addict?

I spoke to a lot of addicts. I spoke to a lot of people in recovery. I’d had my own experience with alcoholics in particular, some of whom found themselves in recovery eventually and others who didn’t. But I had a very one-sided view of what that was like for them. And it was very much sort of influenced by my own reaction to the behavior that comes out of someone under the influence. So to actually speak to people who had examined themselves so closely when they moved into recovery, and by speaking to them, I was able to really understand the psychology of an addict in a way that I hadn’t before. And I don’t think I’d really necessarily wanted to.

Did learning all of that change the way you viewed personal relationships that you’ve had that have been affected by addiction?

Yes. It would be a lie to say that I’m just completely understanding and forgiving now. I think that’s very hard, and I think that that’s sort of like a lifelong battle. But it’s definitely given me the gift of forgiveness to a certain extent, and patience more than anything. I don’t think I had a lot of patience with it before. When you don’t go through it yourself, you can be quite reductive in how you speak about it. So it’s been helpful to really believe that there is a complexity there.

We spoke before about how you had to learn lambing, or helping a lamb give birth. How do you look back on that experience now?

I never assumed that that was going to be my role as a human or an actor—that I would have a hand in bringing not only life, but farm life into the world. It was the most intense experience I’ve ever had in my whole life. Because you are really scared that you’re going to either hurt this lamb that hasn’t even made its way into the world yet, or you might kill it by breaking its neck. I’d never done it before, and all I had to go by was the experience that I’d had in the days prior where I’d watched professional farmers deliver lambs. And of course, they do it in such a relaxed way. They almost don’t think about it anymore, because they’ve delivered hundreds and hundreds of them over the years. And so I’m sort of trying to make a mental note as they go along and do this incredible thing, and try to get to a point where I’m doing it for the first time where the fear isn’t showing on my face. And for that reason, it was one of the toughest challenges I think I’ve ever had as an actor, to try and keep this air of calm about me—because I’m very aware that I’m being filmed, but I was really terrified on the inside.

What made you say yes to Blitz? Was it the chance to work with Steve McQueen?

Yes, it was Steve McQueen, absolutely. I was finishing up Foe, which was just filmed with Paul Mescal in Australia. And I knew I was going on to The Outrun and that that was going to be like a six-month kind of project with prep and pre-shoots and all that sort of stuff. And I love a break—I’m not into overworking because I run out of steam pretty quickly. And so I told my agent I was going on a break…and I said the only way that I would come out of my semi-retirement that I’m planning for is if, I don’t know, someone like Steve McQueen came along and was making his next movie. And he called me a few days later and he was like, “Well, it’s funny you say that because Steve McQueen has his next movie.” He got me in the room with him and we spoke. I was really intrigued by his idea for the film and the fact that, of course, it was going to be a really fresh take on a story that we all thought that we knew.

You also get to sing an original song in the film. How did you feel about doing that? Was it something you really embraced?

I did embrace it. I have always loved to sing. I’m obviously not a professional singer, but it’s something that I really love to do. I kind of like to relax by singing. To me, that’s like ultimate self-expression, turning on a song that you love and kind of belting out a tune to it. And I always wanted to do it in a film. I’ve never really had a chance to actually work with a vocal coach properly and strengthen my voice and learn how to use it in a kind of a smart way.

But you know, it’s something that really scares me to sing in front of anyone. Like I don’t do karaoke unless I’m doing it with other people. I find it really nerve-racking. So it was a real kind of personal feat for me to do that. But I loved it. I had so much fun.

Blitz and The Outrun are very different, but do you see any sort of throughline about the projects you’re saying yes to right now?

I’m always hesitant to analyze that too much, to be honest, because it has always felt very organic for me. There’s like a visceral reaction that I’ll have to something. The telltale sign for me when I’m reading a script is that I’ll start to say the lines out loud. That seems to be a moment where I can now recognize, okay, there’s something in me that wants to bring this to life.

One thing that I’m very conscious of at the minute is that I really want to work with directors that I’m a big fan of. I want to work with a few more directors who have established work. Working with someone like Steve was so exciting because I was a fan. Working with Greta [Gerwig], even though she hadn’t directed before Lady Bird, I knew her work and I was a fan. And I think that can really carry you a long way when you are genuinely invested in somebody’s work. I have found the older that I’ve gotten that my relationship with directors is changing. There isn’t the sort of like, dependency in the way there was when I was a child. I have so much more experience now, and I want to be able to collaborate with them without us losing sight of what both of our roles are. So trying to find the right person to do that with can be tricky sometimes.

But I will stand by really wanting to play a Bond villain, which I will say again and again. Because anytime that I’ve gotten a chance to play someone who’s a little bit evil, I just love it. And I think it would be really fun to do that again.

Who is on your hit list of directors? Because it sounds like you’ve got some specific people in mind.

I want to work with Greta till the day I die. We do have a very special relationship. I think her and John Crowley for me are the directors that I would love to work with again and again, because they’ve just made me better and better. I’ve always really wanted to work with Guillermo del Toro. I’ve always been a really huge fan of his, and I think that, again, he’s got such an interesting take on how to tell a story. It’s like, magical and dark and real, and his characters are always really interesting. Have you seen Armand? [Director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel] is Ingmar Bergman’s grandson, and it’s a stunning film. I think he’s definitely one to watch. I would love to work with Lenny Abrahamson. I’m a big fan of his as well. Jane Campion, I’d love to work with Jane Campion as well.

You were nominated for your first Oscar for Atonement back in 2008, when you were 13. What do you remember about that time?

I remember the stress of trying to find a dress because I didn’t have a stylist. So we had to do all of that by ourselves, which was very stressful. To me, the Oscars at that stage was a TV show. It was something that I had grown up watching at home, and so I was very excited to be involved for that reason. I think my mom getting to meet John Travolta was huge, because my mom is a huge Saturday Night Fever fan. And she went to the cinema to see it 27 times, which is just too much. [Laughs]

You mentioned that after doing many scrappy indie films in your career, you would be open to doing a big studio movie. But I have to assume you must have passed on some franchise offers over the years.

I did. It’s no disrespect to the material, it was always just down to the role. I would have done something in a sort of big commercial film if the role was there. But a lot of the time, the stuff that was being offered to me was sort of like someone who is a bit of a bystander. And it just never interested me. I wanted to be right in the thick of it. And if I wasn’t being given the opportunity to do that in a big commercial sort of box office type film, then I was going to go do that in an independent movie where I could really flesh out a character.

Well, Bond villains have a lot of character.

There’s a lot to unpack there, you know? There’s a lot to work on, which I like. But that is what I do like about something like Bond in general, is that the characters are very interesting. And I do think there’s something kind of cool about having a female villain who wants to take him down and doesn’t just want to fall in love with him.

You’re working on a short film to direct. Can you tease what genre it is, what the story is exploring?

I mean, it’s a short movie, to be honest, like, who knows? I might get it completed and then be like, “Actually, that’s not what I want to do first.” There will be women in it—and potentially a dog.

Your dog?

I don’t know if Stella is professional enough to take on that role. They were trying to put her in Blitz, actually. I think she’d get bored or she might fall asleep. Stella’s a very chill dog, so I don’t know if she has what it takes to follow through with a performance.

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