The Stentor

Media Credit: The lovely Bones Saoirse Ronan plays Susie Salmon in The Lovely Bones

It's hard to be a fifteen-year-old girl these days. Everything about the demographic has been systematically boxed into a marketable blend of clichés. Who else comes to mind but Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus a.k.a. Hannah Montana? True, she's not fifteen anymore, but much of her celebrity was built around the success and scandal that surrounded her as a fifteen year old. When she posed in a provocative photo for Vanity Fair, a flurry of controversy erupted over whether it was appropriate for a fifteen-year-old to be portrayed that way, especially as a role model for even younger children.

Cyrus epitomizes the modern perception of that age group. In the hands of The Disney Channel, Cyrus and other teen pop stars have created both a successful business model and a stereotype for teen celebrity. Heartfelt songs of love and broken-heartedness speak to the "tween" age-group, but only behind a veil of complete wholesomeness that satisfies parents.

In absolute contrast to this kind of celebrity is Saoirse Ronan. The Irish teen actress plays Susie Salmon in The Lovely Bones, the upcoming film adaptation of the novel by the same name, directed by Peter Jackson. Susie has been raped and murdered by her neighbor, and recounts from heaven the story of how she was killed and the ordeal that her family goes through. Like Ronan's previous role in Atonement, it is ominous, but as Ronan says, it is also a movie about hope.

As part of Ronan's promotional tour for the film, I was able to take part in a conference call interview along with twenty-three other college journalists. The call was supposed to be only twenty minutes long, and that left very little time per writer. We were limited to one question per person, so I needed to think long and hard about what question to ask.

Most celebrities who are taking part in these sorts of interviews end up being asked the same questions over and over again. (Jason Reitman made light of this fact by keeping a pie chart of the questions he was asked during his tour for Up in the Air. Each common question became a slice of the pie. The largest slice was about what it was like to work with George Clooney-a question he'd been asked 111 times as of November 11.) The upside of this is that by the end of the ordeal, interviewees know exactly how to answer almost every question imaginable. The downside is that it's probably quite boring for them, and in this case it meant that whatever question I chose to ask Ronan likely would be something she'd already answered a thousand times, and I would be adding nothing to the pool of knowledge on that topic.

My favorite question was one I was afraid to ask; I wanted to ask about Miley Cyrus. It was the question on the tip of everyone's tongue: What do you think of Cyrus as your most famous peer? Do you think you would ever delve into the kind of whimsical young stardom she embodies? My fear was that this question would be at worst offensive and at best off-topic. But it was tempting for its uniqueness and the great angle it would create for the article I would eventually write-this article.

Per standard procedure, I developed a list of possible questions, ready to cross off any that were asked before my turn. I threw in the Cyrus question but figured I would only ask it as a last resort. The interview began and everyone's questions were covered with rapid-fire efficiency, and then it happened. The interviewer was a journalist from Concordia University in Montreal. "So, they already asked you the Peter Jackson question," he began, referring to the question that probably constitutes the bulk of Ronan's question-pie, "so I just wanted to ask you-you've done a lot of serious roles, and I wanted to know why you haven't gone in a lighter route like some of your peers, like the Hannah Montana type?"

He had done it. Like me, he knew that something about that question wasn't quite appropriate, so he had to say his original question was taken as an excuse. But the Peter Jackson line was obviously a ploy. Asking what it's like to work with another big name is the most common question in show-business, which is why Reitman had to answer it 111 times about George Clooney. Besides, I find it hard to believe that the one reporter who had the guts to ask the most interesting question had been defaulting on the most mundane question imaginable.

Ronan at first seemed to recoil from the question. "Well, I don't think I'm really that kind of actor anyway," she said. "I'll leave Miley Cyrus to that." She had the same sick feeling about the question that I had. For all the success Cyrus has enjoyed, there is a lot that is not desirable about her lifestyle. She has to keep her image balanced as an idol to her fans and as a wholesome figure to parents. It all adds up to an unrealistic balancing act of perfection. No child can expect her teenage years to be as glamorous and moderately dramatic as a Hannah Montana movie, yet children and parents alike idolize the character as a healthy ideal. Ronan doesn't want to embody some pristine world of the imagination, she is better at capturing the dark side of the world, which is where the most hope can truly be found after all. There is more hope for a family scarred by murder to find closure than there is for any child in the real world to live a life like that of Hannah Montana.

But just because Ronan isn't afraid to play dark roles doesn't mean her life is as ominous as her films. She approaches interviews with a cheerfulness that can seem surprising to those who only know her from her roles. When it was my turn, I asked her how she is able to switch from cheerful to doleful on the screen. "You know, I find sometimes it's quite easy to be the opposite of how you are in real life," she said. "I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just because it's not somewhere that I go very often. The door is always open for me to go there… [Peter Jackson] and I were really on the same page and we had the same outlook on what [Susie] was going to be like… so it just took a lot of thinking."

Either Ronan is a precocious individual, or Cyrus has lulled the world into a very simplified view of the teenage mind. The world won't seem so simple in The Lovely Bones. In the words Ronan used to describe her experience reading the book, you can expect to feel "every emotion possible." The movie will be in theaters on December 11. Ronan speaks from heaven in the film, but don't expect to be lulled into a fantasy-world.

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