"It’s not cheesy, which of course I didn’t want. The relationship that Mel and Jared have is developed and quite grown up. They are grown up. And Wanda and Ian is very sweet and romantic, this is the start of their romance. We are watching them from the beginning of the film and how they fall in love, how they are almost torn apart. In that way is great, that there is these two, separate relationships that they[Mel/Wanda] have."
"Saoirse is an amazing actress. She has been working really hard on set. I admire her for that. Whenever she walks into a room, everyone just starts smiling."
"Even though we worked so little together in The Lovely Bones, we had a past and felt comfortable together. And she’s such a sweet person and so talented. It’s not that difficult, honestly, to get along with Saoirse Ronan. I’d always looked forward to working with her again. If I just plant my feet in front of her and let go, we’ll go somewhere."
"I’ve always loved Jake as an actor. He steals the scene and you watch him instead of the people you’re supposed to be watching. That is a quality Saoirse has as well, and one of the things we talked about was, ‘How are we going to get guys on the screen that we are going to look at instead of Saoirse?’ You know, people who can divert our attention even a little bit from what she’s doing. And Jake has that quality and presence."
—Stephenie Meyer, The Host Official Movie Companion (via lanoshea)
"This is the thing with Saoirse: When she’s on the screen in a movie, you have a really hard time looking at the other actors [..] That was one of the ways Jack Abel came into this. I’m a big fan of his, and I’ve always felt like when he’s in a movie, he’s playing the bad guy or whatever. He’s not the main character, but you’re always looking at him because he has that charisma. We brought him in and their chemistry was really, really great.
I wasn’t familiar with Max Irons, but [director] Andrew [Niccol] was, and Andrew loves him. He said, let’s see how he is, and the reads together were pretty wow."
"It’s a liberating feeling that I’ll be directing something I haven’t had to make up. It’ll be fun. But I have to say, Stephanie gave me her 650-page book to adapt. That’s a workout to start with but I’ve managed to get it down to a script and there are two more movies coming after the initial movie,” he says. Clearly, he enjoys a challenge. “Well, yes. At first I thought, ‘this is going to be impossible’"
"So this is a whole new, maybe, trilogy. I don’t know but there were really interesting actors in it. Saoirse Ronan plays the lead. She’s a fantastic actress and her part is very difficult, because she has an alien inside of her. So she has two voices constantly going on in her head. That’s a challenge, obviously. And William Hurt and Frances Fisher, a great mix. My character certainly is great. I play an alien who’s sort of evil, you think, and then is not."
