Saoirse Ronan had challenges filming ‘tough’ movie ‘The Outrun’: ‘It’s personal to me’

Ronan gives it a good run

Drugs involve friends, partners, dad’s disorders, mother’s prayers in Michael Barker and Tom Bernard’s Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Outrun.”

Saoirse Ronan, playing an alcoholic, brings hospitals, addiction, sobriety onto Scotland’s small far-off Orkney islands. Retreating from London into cold, bleak, bracing, heavy gales that setting begets healing.

First-time producer Saoirse, who’s had four Oscar noms, wanted in on this best seller. “Huge challenge. We shot in July. Lambing season. Suddenly I’m birthing baby lambs. A choreographer worked when I’m playing drunk, sober, nervous, on how to stage this character.

“In Papay, our last location, desperate for peace, healing and recovery, we spent a whole day in the ocean with the seals.

“In one scene you see an animal giving birth and I’m singing to the sea. A Celtic tradition. But I haven’t eaten a lobster since.

“Tough movie. But I was right for it. There was improvisation and lots of my own things. A combination of what I know went into it. It’s personal to me. I even went to a farm to see lambing. Lots of blood. Watching the sheep going into labor, pulling the baby out, I was terrified. Scared. Later that same lamb then chased me to the ground.”

Must’ve had help chasing her because at the Cinema Society screening she was inside a floor-length evening gown.

Keeping dear icon Lear and near

November brings Tripp Whetsell’s Applause Books bio of Norman Lear.

It says Carroll O’Connor (Archie Bunker in “All in the Family”) argued with creator and producer Lear throughout the CBS show’s eight-year run. Even rewrote its pilot in pencil.

And in NBC’s “Sanford and Son” egomaniacal Redd Foxx caused chaos and wore a gold coke spoon around his neck.

Journalist/p.r. rep Jesse Nash is shopping Whetsell’s tome “Norman Lear: His Life & Times” for a miniseries or biopic. 

Dinner roles

Agreed New York City is slithering down the toilet:

However, Ellen’s Stardust Diner, facing the Winter Garden Theatre, delivers millions a year. Shove yacht owners. It’s 2,500 daily snackers.

Miss Subway in 1959 Ellen Hart Strum opened Ellen’s cafe in 1987. Recognizing the retro diner fad, she designed its 1950s style and added the “Stardusters” singing waitstaff.

My waitress Michelle sang Petula Clark’s ’60s “Downtown” while serving up Frank Sinatra’s “The Best Is Yet to Come” burger, plus macaroni and cheese, salad, two heaping scoops of vanilla ice cream. Friends had scrambled eggs, lox, rye toast from the all-day breakfast menu.

More bargains in this great city:

Extell’s Central Park Tower — 217 W. 57th St., tallest mattress in the sky, you could snare a rock-bottom 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom tower for a lousy, dirt-cheap, embarrassingly chintzy only $43.5 million.

More closet space? Available’s the $150 million penthouse — a steal down from its original $250 million ask. Also a nearly 18,000-square-foot triplex has yet to sell.

I don’t know why. It has swimming pools, theater, restaurant with 360-degree views of the park, Hudson and East rivers, city skyline on the 100th floor.

So, listen, don’t bitch that I don’t tell you everything.

It’s only in New York, kids, only in New York.