Saoirse Ronan has been turning on the Irish charm Stateside ahead of a hopeful Oscar nomination tomorrow.
Last night she appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and gave the chat show host a few lessons on the Irish accent and our hard to pronounce names.
The 21 year old Irish actress began by laying out a few handy tips on delivering an authentic Irish brogue. His attempt at "How's it going, I'm Stephen" was met with a thumbs up for Saoirse who joked that "It's not great, but it's not bad".
Colbert then turned his attention to the ongoing difficulty for people not used to tricky Irish vowel combinations (yes we mean you Denis Quaid) in pronouncing her name.
Saoirse said that “I’ve had a lot of Sorsees, Suarez, Sarsee, Seershay.” Colbert joked that “You do look a bit like a Suarez, Senorita Suarez. You’ve got a very thick Mexican accent" before the two of them rattled through some of the trickier Irish names such as Tadhg, Siobhan and Caoimhe.
Saoirse's appearance on the popular chat show is the latest charm offensive by the Carlow native, who tomorrow will be hoping to pick up a second career Oscar nomination for Brooklyn.
She recently appeared on the Ellen Show and also joked about Denis Quaid's mauling of her name when announcing the Golden Globe nominations.
Afterwards she was presented with one of DeGeneres' special gifts – a huge wearable sign that reads, "Hello, my name is Sur-Sha". It even features special pockets for champagne bottles and snacks.
Playing up her Irishness is obviously doing the actress no harm. Recently there was a huge online spat after a Sky News reporter claimed that Britain can claim her saying "I think we can take Saoirse Ronan as one of ours".
Richard Suchet then made things worse by responding to a tweet by RTÉ TEN, saying that British people will be "willing her to win" as she is from the "British Isles" which only caused more uproar on the twittersphere.
He belatedly apologised on Twitter for all the ructions.
On Saoirse, I apologise. It came out wrong. I know the UK can't claim her, of course. But the British would love to see her win for Ireland.
— Richard Suchet (@SkySuchet) January 10, 2016
Satirical news-site Waterford Whispers responded to the controversy with an article on Monday which was headlined 'Irish Actress Kate Winslet Wins Golden Globe'. In a neat turn of the tables, it seems some people might just not have got the joke. Bless.
