Irish Eye on Hollywood:
A Colorful Career for Saoirse

Given the raves she earned with her searing performance in Brooklyn, we can expect many breakthrough performances from Saoirse Ronan in the years to come. But one of her next projects is a breakthrough film of an entirely different nature. Ronan and several other Irish actors will appear in what is being called the first painted animated film in the history of cinema. The movie is entitled Loving Vincent, and it explores the final months of artist Vincent van Gogh’s life. In order to tell this story in a unique way, the film’s writer/directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman decided to first shoot live-action scenes with Ronan, as well as Irish co-stars Chris O’Dowd and Clondalkin native Aidan Turner. Then a team of nearly 80 artists were charged with creating an oil painting on canvas (van Gogh’s preferred technique) for each frame of the film. By one count Loving Vincent will be made up of over 60,000 oil paintings. Look for Loving Vincent in theaters later this year or early next. Meanwhile, Saoirse Ronan remains busy. She is also in the process of shooting a new version of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull, written by playwright Stephen Karam, whose haunting Broadway play The Humans has earned rave reviews. The play explores an Irish American family not unlike Karam’s own. (He grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.) ♦