She’s only 8 years old, but Emma Bolger has her Oscar speech ready – and she practices it every night.
“I’d like to thank Jim Sheridan, my mommy and daddy, my aunt and Lord God. And my sister,” Emma recites to The Post on the phone from her home in Dublin, Ireland.
Sheridan is the director of Emma’s movie, the stirring drama “In America.” And Emma’s sister, 12-year-old Sarah Bolger, is her co-star.
Naturally enough, the girls play sisters, daughters of poor Irish immigrants who land in a seedy part of New York City in the 1980s, looking for a new beginning after the death of their son.
The siblings play a central role in the film and both Emma, as the mischievous Ariel, and Sarah, as her more thoughtful older sister Christy, give outstanding performances.
Sheridan, whose films (including “My Left Foot”) have been nominated for 13 Oscars and have won two, says that not only are both girls good enough to be nominated for a shared Best Supporting Actress award – “they’re good enough to win.”
Sarah’s not so sure, but Emma – whom Sarah calls Chatterbox – believes the world is her oyster.
“My sister thinks little, I think big,” Emma says. “So I think I might get an Oscar nomination, not her.”
If Sarah does find herself clutching a little gold statue next February, she’ll have her younger sister to thank.
“I got her the role,” Emma boasts, adding with a giggle, “I’m her agent.”
Two years ago, Sheridan’s daughter Kirsten, who co-wrote “In America,” saw a 6-year-old Emma win a poetry-reading competition and asked her to take a screen test.
Jim Sheridan was so impressed that he hired her on the spot.
“Then I said, ‘All right, Jim, I’ve got a sister in the car,’ ” Emma says. “And he said, ‘What age?’ And I said, ‘Ten’ and he said, ‘Too young,’ so I had to force him out to the car.”
Sarah, who sings a touching rendition of “Desperado” in the film, was a hit, too, so Sheridan rewrote the script for a younger girl.
The Bolger sisters have a wonderfully natural rapport on-screen, but Sarah says there’s one big difference in their relationship on-screen and off:
“In the film we don’t fight, but we have some fights at home – ‘It’s my hair brush, not hers,’ that kind of stuff,” she says. “But it’s more or less the same. We’re just as close in real life.”
Sarah says that most of her school friends have seen and loved “In America,” which is rated PG-13. (See Family Film Guide for details.)
“It’s not really a kids’ film, but kids can definitely respond to it,” she says.
Emma, of course, goes one better: “It’s not good, it’s brilliant. My friends think it’s really good and they think I’m the best.”
