Irish Hollywood star Saoirse Ronan says she wasn’t uncomfortable during her first romantic scenes on screen — as she is friends with the actors starring alongside her.

The 18-year-old recently wrapped filming on The Host — in which her two characters were each in love with different men.

She said: “It was interesting. It was the first time I’ve ever done it.

“The interesting thing about The Host is that I’m in love with two people. I play two different characters and they are both in love with two different men. Max Irons plays one of them, the human character (Jared), and the alien character is in love with Ian played by Jake Abel. I get on really well with both of them. I knew them before we started so it was nice, it did make it easier, we were very comfortable.”

Saoirse didn’t find kissing in front of the cameras weird because they were all friends – but if they weren’t she admitted it may have been difficult. And she explained that she expects to be offered romantic roles from now on but that the main thing for her is an interesting story.

She said: “It was fine because we all got on well. I think if we hadn’t got on well and things were a little bit uncomfortable off set it would have been ten times worse to do scenes like that. It was fine. It’s kind of a given at this stage that romantic stories are going to be offered to me. To be honest it’s more about the story and it’s more about the character than anything else. It’s not really important that there is love scenes in it or not.”

Saoirse celebrated her 18th birthday on the set of The Host and the team behind the movie organised a cake and a band to play for her. And she said that nothing has changed about her only the fact that she can now buy a Lotto ticket.

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Last evening, following the Cinemagic Festival, Saoirse also attended the opening for Barry McCall’s new exhibition at the Copper House Gallery in Dublin, which is titled Pho20graphy, like the photo book she is also featured in. Images are up in the gallery!

Earlier today, in Dublin, Saoirse celebrated her birthday at the Cinemagic Film & Televison for Young People. You may remember her attending opening night last year? She blew out candles on a birthday cake and visited some of the attendees this year. I must say, I really love her outfit. She looked so pretty! =) 23 pictures can be found in the gallery at the moment but we’re still searching for more so check back.

Meg Rosoff, author of the book How I Live Now, posted a few updates about the film on her blog. Read it here and I’ve also quoted it below:

1. The script is still being polished, and no, I haven’t read it.
2. There are four or five actors in the running for Edmond and three for Piper, and they’ll be workshopping with the director (Kevin MacDonald) and Saoirse Ronan for the final choice. As far as I know, these are all “unknowns�, ie, not Zac Efron or Taylor Lautner. Or Daniel Radcliffe or Robert Pattinson. Or Shia LaBeouf. Or Eddie Redmayne.
3. Principal photography begins 25 of June (!!!)
4. Location will be “remote� — north of England, Scotland, Wales?
5. Film is likely to be released in spring 2013

Exciting! Thanks for the updates Meg!

I was waiting for any kind of confirmation before posting this and now, here it is (a few days late)!

Saoirse Ronan and Jennifer Connelly have hopped aboard the cast of Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming biblical epic “Noah,” Paramount confirmed yesterday per indieWire.

Looks like they’re going to need a bigger boat.

“Noah,” of course, is Aronofsky’s long-delayed, long-rumored take on the familiar tale of the biblical figure who built a giant ship to escape the watery destruction of the world at the hands of an angry deity. And as we reported earlier in the week, Russell Crowe is on board as the titular character.

That makes “Noah” a reunion of sorts between Crowe and Connelly, who previously starred together in 2001′s “A Beautiful Mind,” a collaboration that earned Connelly an Oscar for Best Actress and Crowe his third Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Just what role Ronan will be playing is still up in the air — one of Noah’s daughters-in-law? — but with a cast like this, one thing is clear: Come hell or high water, fans are going to be lining up two-by-two for this one. Source

Last week, EW made a special sneak peek visit to the set of The Host, the big screen adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling sci-fi novel. This is our first of several reports.

An hour outside of Albuquerque, N.M., on the rocky edge of a small, picturesque canyon, Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) is squinting into the sun. She’s flanked by two sleek, silver sports cars, and her eyes are ringed with an eerie, iridescent circle. They’re both signs that Kruger is playing The Seeker — a dogged member of the police force of an alien species called Souls, who have successfully invaded our planet by literally invading our bodies. She’s looking for Wanderer (Hanna’s Saoirse Ronan, pictured with costar Max Irons), a member of her race who, aptly, has wandered off into the desert after the consciousness of her human host, Melanie, cajoled Wanderer into finding what’s left of Melanie’s human family. The Seeker is also keenly set on finding this rag-tag cluster of the remains of humanity, but for very different reasons. “We find her,” Kruger (as The Seeker) mutters to herself, “we find the threat.”

Fans of Stephenie Meyer’s 600-plus-page novel have likely already gathered from the description above that film interpretation of The Seeker is almost the exact opposite of how she’s described in the book. Instead of small, dark-haired, and clad mostly in black, the very blonde Kruger stands regally on some serious wedge heels, dressed in a futuristic cream-colored pant suit. It’s a change designed by writer-director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time) to reflect the “purity” of the egalitarian Souls, and Meyer told me on the set that she happily embraced it. Gattaca is her favorite sci-fi film of all time.

As for the delightful Ronan, although she wasn’t working that day, she came out to the set to speak with EW about the film, one day after the Oscar-nominated Irish actress turned 18. We’ll have video of our interviews with her, Meyer, Kruger, and Irons in the coming months — the movie, which is still shooting, isn’t hitting theaters until March 29, 2013, after all — but I can tell you how Ronan is differentiating the alien Wanderer from the internal voice of Melanie in the film. It’s actually quite simple: The Wanderer speaks with a generic American accent, whereas Melanie’s voice is inflected with a Louisiana twang, another Meyer-approved tweak from the book. Source

Thanks to Adam, we have a few updates on Saoirse’s upcoming films Violet and Daisy and Justin and the Knights of Valour, as well as new promotional stills from both! First, an article about Justin appeared online a few days ago, however it is in Spanish so I won’t quote it here. You can read the article in Spanish here or a Google-translated version here (though keep in mind the translation isn’t exact). It does mention that Saoirse keeps her Irish accent in the movie! Also, check out a cool image of Saoirse’s character Talia in the gallery!

Another article, in an interview with Geoffrey Fletcher, he mentions that Violet and Daisy will be out sometime this fall. Read it below:

You’ve gone from writing to directing films. What’s the status with your first directorial effort, ‘Violet and Daisy?’

GF: I couldn’t be happier with it. People have told me that they’ve never seen anything like it. It has its own universe and such an amazing cast. Everybody in the cast and crew “went for it� and delivered some of their best work ever.

Will it be released in theaters this year?

GF: Yes. In the fall.

What was the reception like when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year?

GF: Really cool. We had a frenzied red carpet and each screening was sold out though we hadn’t done much publicity beforehand. The audience seemed to jump at all the surprises and laugh a lot. Towards the end, we saw a few people crying, in a good way I think. To me, it was so gratifying. Source

Thanks again to Adam for all this info!