{"id":214734,"date":"2025-12-04T09:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T09:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/214734\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T09:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T09:06:12","slug":"ive-always-wanted-to-be-involved-with-an-irish-mafia-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/214734\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve always wanted to be involved with an Irish mafia\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Olsen<\/a> is a singular movie star. Breaking through in Sean Durkin\u2019s eerie Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/a>, 14 years ago, she went on to confirm mainstream status in the Godzilla remake<\/a> of 2014 and, as the slinky Scarlet Witch, in various bits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. <\/p>\n

But she has always remained an independent presence. That is to do with the films she makes. It is also to do with her attitude. She spent a semester at Moscow Art Theatre School. She has done Romeo and Juliet off Broadway. And she shuns social media. Do the PR wonks not encourage her to Insta her latest release?<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously there are opportunities for being a salesperson \u2013 if I wanted to do that stuff,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m a shit salesperson unless I really love something.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have not, to my knowledge, seen Olsen try to sell something she doesn\u2019t love. When she\u2019s on board with a production she couldn\u2019t be less excremental. She\u2019s jolly, unpretentious and clever. And she talks like a real person. <\/p>\n

We are here because of her role in Eternity, a delightful romantic comedy from the Irish film-maker David Freyne<\/a>. There\u2019s a lot of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger\u2019s A Matter of Life and Death in this tale of a young woman who, delayed in the afterlife\u2019s holding area, must choose between eternity with her first husband or her second one. (Callum Turner is the one who died young. Miles Teller is the chap she then settled for.)<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cPowell and Pressburger are in there. And also we were very conscious of Billy Wilder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freyne, a versatile director, has proved himself in Ireland with the horror flick The Cured<\/a> and the romantic comedy Dating Amber<\/a>. Ruair\u00ed O\u2019Brien, who has worked on Line of Duty and The Fall, is the director of photography. Heck, Olsen is in with the Irish cinematic mafia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be involved with an Irish mafia,\u201d she says lightheartedly, echoing my facetious terminology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had watched Dating Amber, and I was so moved by the sincerity and the humour. It didn\u2019t feel like you were sacrificing one for the other. I also thought it was edited together really beautifully, and the colouring was really beautiful. I was really curious what he would do with a bigger opportunity of a story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DirectorDirector David Freyne and star Elizabeth Olsen attend the premiere of A24’s Eternity. Photograph: Eric Charbonneau\/A24 via Getty Images <\/p>\n

She is probably aware that Patrick Freyne<\/a>, the director\u2019s brother, is an Irish Times journalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I knew that,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is a scene when I\u2019m in the Ski Mountain Land with Cal. I can\u2019t remember if it ended up in the film or not, but we plugged his brother\u2019s book<\/a>. We used it as a prop.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Eternity review: This charming comedy is Irish director David Freyne\u2019s best film yetOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Well received following its premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, Eternity is the sort of intelligent romantic comedy they don\u2019t make so much any more.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019ve been wanting to do something comedic,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cBut when I read things that are comedy they are often quite broad and don\u2019t have enough depth or complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any consideration of Olsen\u2019s career inevitably touches on her once unavoidable older sisters. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were the biggest child stars of the 1990s. Elizabeth, when a tiny kid, did make the odd appearance in the twins\u2019 TV movies, but she didn\u2019t properly commit to acting until deep into high school. Did the pressure put on her sisters cause her to think twice about life in the limelight?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a scary thing to put yourself in a field as a public entertainer,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just something I did my whole life. My earliest memories were dancing, doing musical theatre, singing lessons, making things with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many future actors do that, but few have a pair of pocket superstars in the family home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to have those obstacles growing up where you see maybe one idea of what a career is. You see it up close in person. And then you have to build what is important to you in a different way that becomes more substantial to who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

She does have credits on Olsen twins joints such as the 1994 film How the West Was Fun, but my calculator tells me she can only have been five years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that was just after-school daycare,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause there are four kids growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I first met Olsen, back in 2012, she was still juggling classes at New York University with promotional duties for Martha Marcy May Marlene. The film has been a huge hit at Sundance, but she remained committed to finishing college. That impressed me.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh God, yeah. When I was going to such an expensive school, it would have been really foolish not to,\u201d she says. \u201cAt that point I could start paying for my own education and not rely on parents. So it felt nice to get to do that and to participate in that way. Education is very important to me. I\u2019ve been very grateful for that being something that was such a huge part of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ElizabethElizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner in Eternity, directed by David Freyne <\/p>\n

And she spent time that time studying in Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was incredible getting to live in a different country with a totally different culture, especially at a time when the international conflicts were pretty muted,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Olsen gives out a relaxed, devil-may-care attitude. But she clearly does take the art seriously. She is an executive producer of Eternity<\/a>. She has worked hard to get Love Child, the upcoming film from Todd Solondz<\/a>, legendary director of Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse, before the cameras. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a producer on it, but I\u2019ve never hustled more for a movie that\u2019s having a hard time getting made,\u201d she said of that project last year. <\/p>\n

Yet Olsen is also a MCU star. She was first credited as Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, in Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/a>, in 2015, and repeated the role in several follow-ups, before deconstructing it in the postmodern TV series Wandavision<\/a>. That franchise eats up time. Did she have any reservations about signing on?<\/p>\n

\"ElizabethElizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in WandaVision <\/p>\n

\u201cI was so excited,\u201d she says. \u201cI had loved Iron Man and Iron Man 2. I thought the first Avengers was great and was so new. Looking back 10 years later, it\u2019s something we\u2019ve normalised as part of culture, but it was something new. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had fantasy genres. We had Lord of the Rings. I grew up with Indiana Jones. There was that. But this was a really intelligent and entertaining and funny genre that Marvel figured out itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course she didn\u2019t then know how long she\u2019d be associated with the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also only signed up for one movie,\u201d she says. \u201cI think there are reservations. Maybe they come if people ask you for six films or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have scoured the enormous cast list for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and do not see her name on it. Is the door open for her to return in the future?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m open to it. I think you need time away in order to figure it out. I think I\u2019ve been so lucky in that I\u2019ve done so much with one character.\u201d<\/p>\n

But being in the MCU gives a little piece of an actor to the wider world. Suddenly, Elizabeth Olsen, classy enabler of independent films, was on mile-high billboards in Tokyo, New York and Barcelona. Was it hard to retain privacy?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot to keep my private life to myself,\u201d she says. \u201cI am more recognised, I guess. But I\u2019m someone who just travels the world bright-eyed and bushy tailed. I don\u2019t really live my life thinking about all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can believe that. In a recent interview with National Public Radio, in the United States, she argued that she felt more like a boomer than a millennial. She connects with analogue technologies and less busy cultural content.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nostalgia for a time that seemed a bit simpler, yeah,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd by simpler, I mean, that\u2019s comparative. I find the distractions of all the different ways we communicate sad and exhausting. I feel like they\u2019re really playing a number on our emotional intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eternity is in cinemas from Friday, December 5th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Olsen is a singular movie star. Breaking through in Sean Durkin\u2019s eerie Martha Marcy May Marlene, 14…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[116143,18,60748,117,19,17,1889,12474,116839],"class_list":{"0":"post-214734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-david-freyne","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-elizabeth-olsen","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-marvel","15":"tag-patrick-freyne","16":"tag-todd-solondz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115660507739704364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}