Saoirse Ronan Says She'd “Love” to Direct and Shares the Advice ...

Saoirse Ronan is ready to direct and is sharing the advice her frequent collaborator Greta Gerwig gave her about taking on the role.

The 30-year-old actress — who stars in and produced the Sony Pictures Classics film The Outrun — said she has aspirations to take on more behind-the-camera roles after producing for the first time. “I’d love to do that [directing] next,” Ronan told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Thursday night.

“That was always a passion of mine, and it was actually Greta who said that you need to delve into the prep first to see if that’s something that piques your interest because that’s where the really hard work lies,” she said. “[Producing] was an education in that, all the sort of tough decisions that you’ve got to make early on, and it just made me feel more confident as well as a storyteller being involved that early in the project.”

The Oscar-nominated actress plays a young Scottish woman battling addiction in The Outrun, which is based on Amy Liptrot’s memoir. Ronan said Liptrot’s writing — she served as a co-writer on the script as well — drew the actress to the project, along with “how she depicted an addiction story and how it was so much more than that.”

The Outrun has seemingly been a transformative experience for Ronan. “You can’t help but learn so much from the experience [of producing], the good and the bad,” she said. “I think it’s given me new appreciation for independent filmmaking in particular because it’s very hard to get most things off the ground and takes an incredibly long time.”

Ronan noted that “each day you’re not necessarily sure that you’re going to make it to the next day.” The producer said the process of getting the film off the ground was a “challenge” but the crew that worked on the film was “wonderful” and were used to working in an environment like that.

Scotland, the backdrop of the film, is a special place to Ronan. “It’s a place I’m very passionate about,” she said, adding that the film’s subject matter is “very personal” to her. “To see it being written about in this way, in such a unique way, just felt very fresh to me.”

Ronan added, “[I] felt like if we could pull it off as an adaptation, it could be really special.”

The Outrun is now in theaters.

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