Rising star Saoirse Ronan is to play an Irish immigrant in 1950s America in an upcoming movie.
Saoirse Ronan in 2012The film is an adaption of the 2010 Colm Tóibín novel, Brooklyn which has been adapted by Nick Horby. Irish director John Crowley has been signed up to shoot the movie.
In an interview with Bleeding Cool (via Dark Horizons) the Intermission director said that the film was: “A story about emigration from Ireland to America in the fifties. A young woman, who’s going to be played by Saoirse Ronan, about her story in America.”
The book tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman from a small Irish town who falls on hard times in the years after the Second World War. She leaves her country and heads to Brooklyn where she gets a job and falls in love.
However the story takes a turn when Lacey receives devastating news from back home in Ireland.
Ronan has a growing reputation
Crowley said: “I think it’s a story that we’ve never seen on film, certainly not from Ireland, yet. I think it’s an amazing story about Europe and America in the 20th Century. It’s like an epic and a postage stamp at the same time. It’s exquisite.”
The movie will see former child star Ronan further cement her reputation as a serious young adult actress following her starring role in How I Live Now which was released earlier this month.
The film is likely to resonate with thousands of Irish Americans whose parents and grandparents emigrated from Ireland at the time the story is set in the 1950s.
