DIGGING DEEP IN HER OWN FAMILY LIFE - SAOIRSE RONAN

ON PORTRAYING MOTHERHOOD IN INTENSE WARTIME DRAMA

- GILL PRINGLE

Newlywed Queen of be a mum in real life yet, but reportedly tied the knot in a private she drew on the close bond she enjoys with her own mother to play a maternal figure in her latest role, in Sir Steve McQueen's big-screen wartime drama Blitz.

As a single parent in 1940s London, Saoirse's character Rita will do anything to protect her nine-yearold son George, and is brokenhearted when she feels forced to send him to the countryside with other Second World War child evacuees.

It wasn't hard for the 30-year-old Irish actress to portray the closeness between a young mum and her son.

"It's exactly in the way a young parent does with their kids, you know?" she says, speaking from Los Angeles.

"I mean, my mam had me when she was 30, so she wasn't superyoung, but there's an element to our relationship that is almost like we're sisters," she says of her mother Monica Brennan, whom she has credited for accompanying her on film sets as a teenager, protecting her from uncomfortable situations.

The New York-born former child actress, who moved to Dublin when she was three years old, remains very close to her parents, having lived at home with them until she was 19.

In her own life, she looks to emulate her parents' happy marriage, having been with Scottish actor Jack Lowden since they met on the set of Mary ceremony in Edinburgh in July.

Making her TV debut aged nine, in Irish medical drama The Clinic, she broke into film four years later, in Michelle Pfeiffer's romcom I Could Never Be Your Woman.