Saoirse Ronan and Director Nora Fingscheidt stopped by The Hollywood Reporter's studio during the Sundance film festival to chat all about their film 'The Outrun,' adapted from Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir. Ronan talks about the "structure-less" storyline of the film and how Fingscheidt made her feel "protected" on set. Plus, Ronan dishes on celebrating her 30th birthday this year.
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00:00 I'm turning 30 this year. Dirty 30! There's a lot of celebrations happening this year.
00:06 I'm playing a girl called Rona in the film version of The Outrun and Rona is
00:16 based on Amy Liptrot and Amy's real life and I got involved pretty early on.
00:27 Sarah Brocklehurst had acquired the rights to the book and myself, Jack
00:34 Loudon and Dominic Norris completely fell in love with the book independently
00:38 of that and found that it was already sort of in very early development and we
00:44 really wanted to get involved. So initially it was sort of, it was the
00:48 whole project that was very enticing to me and I guess you know being able
00:56 to play a character that spans over 10 years and you get to see this
01:01 incredible arc is always very attractive to an actor. The reason why we
01:11 decided to produce as it were is because we wanted to help develop it, we wanted
01:16 to help shape it and find the right filmmaker to come on board to make
01:22 it with us and you know for Jack in particular and for myself, Scotland is
01:30 his home, my second home so we're always looking to bring work back to Scotland
01:37 and Ireland anyway. So yeah, so it just it felt very personal, it felt like
01:44 there was a lot of heart that was sort of in it for us from the very
01:49 beginning and we were really lucky that Nora came on board soon after that.
01:54 So when the project came to me it was Amy's book, it's a memoir by Amy Leptret
01:59 about her life and her experiences and it was clear that Saoirse would star in
02:04 the film so when I read the book I already had Saoirse in mind and that was
02:08 quite an amazing experience because for a filmmaker that's a dream coming true.
02:13 It also takes place at the edge of the world sort of you know in a very tiny
02:18 tiny place with many islands at the north of Scotland so the combination was
02:22 really very intriguing. When it came to me it was still Amy's book so we hadn't
02:28 written the screenplay yet and it was very clear that to adapt something that's
02:33 so internal, it's almost like a collection of journal essays into a
02:37 movie would be quite a challenge so it was clear the film would need to be sort
02:42 of very nerdy in parts and experimental in order to keep this because it is also
02:47 what makes the book so special, her inner life.
02:50 Yeah it's sort of, it's nonlinear as well and it's sort of weirdly sort of
02:57 structure-less in terms of how you would translate that to a movie so I think
03:04 there were a lot of filmmakers that were very scared to take something like this
03:07 on because if you read the book you'll see what Amy does so brilliantly is that
03:13 she will see something in the present day that will remind her of something
03:19 that happened to her when she was a child and then you'll sort of go into
03:22 that memory for a few pages and then you'll come out of it again and suddenly
03:26 you're someplace else so to take something like that on and sort of
03:32 recalibrate it almost for film form is is a real challenge and we kind of
03:39 didn't know where to start either but we did know that the life of this person
03:45 and the environment that she ends up in which is the Orkney Islands was going to
03:51 be incredibly cinematic and so we knew that there was a movie in there but
03:57 trying to sort of reshape that for for the screen was was really difficult.
04:02 I knew about it through Jack. Jack had been up there with a friend a few years
04:07 before and he he's a massive history buff and so him and his friend Andy were
04:13 really obsessed with this Arctic explorer called John Ray who was this
04:18 incredible man who came from the Orkney Islands and so they had gone up there
04:23 kind of around the time that we were doing Mary Queen of Scots they had gone
04:27 up there and he would show me you know beautiful photographs of the scenery and
04:32 it like it rains the whole time and you could hardly see anything and it was
04:35 windy and but the one thing he said is that everyone was so incredible and sort
04:39 of the Orkney Islands they wouldn't even call themselves Scottish they're
04:44 Orcadian first and foremost and you'd find that with people from the Shetland
04:48 Islands as well it's almost more Nordic and in terms of their culture and their
04:53 their accent is very different and the slang words that they use are sort of
04:59 very individual and so it is Scottish but it's also sort of not so yeah that
05:05 was my introduction to it and the first time I went up there was when we were
05:09 delivering lambs in April, May, yeah. There was definitely an energy on this that
05:18 was incredibly calm and very it felt very very safe and you know there's so
05:26 many situations that Rona finds herself in and as the actor to play it were
05:31 incredibly vulnerable places to put yourself in and I think Nora set a
05:38 tone for myself and the crew and that was just I don't know it was it was just
05:45 calm all the time it was peaceful it was we felt very protected and you know this
05:51 was an environment that we were all putting ourselves into where we were all
05:54 sort of having to face and probably very difficult memories and events that we've
06:00 personally gone through ourselves so it needed to be a real sort of safe
06:04 environment I think having that female energy really did help the whole process
06:10 really. I have to figure out sort of what does the actor need because some people
06:16 need a lot of space and others need a lot of conversation everybody's
06:20 different so my job is finding out what does my you know partner opposite me
06:27 need exactly and then I can do my job. Where do you want to see yourself this
06:32 year? I'm turning 30 this year. Everyone's like I don't know when I turn 30
06:37 everything changed and I just sort of like settled into who I am in my life
06:44 and then a year later you see them and I'm sort of like does that true? So I
06:50 yeah I don't know but there seems to be a lot of expectation when it comes to
06:54 turning 30 but I don't really think about it I've never been a big it's not
07:00 that I'm not a big birthday person but I'm just sort of like yeah I'm 30 now
07:04 I'm gonna be on set
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