Saoirse: Arterton is very maternal

Saoirse Ronan has said Byzantium star Gemma Arterton was very maternal to her, which helped the pair to bond on set of new film Byzantium.

The pair play a couple of vampires who are mother and daughter in the fantasy thriller from Interview With A Vampire's Neil Jordan, which was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Saoirse said: "She's lovely, she's very, very sweet and somebody who I got on with pretty much straight away. And she's got a real maternal instinct as well, which I think helped for us to get along even better from the off.

"We're in pretty much everything together, we have a lot of scenes together so we got to know each other quite well and she's just lovely."

The 18-year-old Irish actress said the film couldn't really be compared to Interview With A Vampire.

She said: "I think the way the story is told, and even visually it is very different to Interview With A Vampire. That was quite traditional in the way the story was told, which was so beautiful.

The grandeur is still there when it comes to the imagery and the cinematography and all that kind of stuff. This is a very beautiful film to look at, but that jump between present and past, and fantasy and reality, is kind of like a Neil Jordan stamp.

"So you can expect to see a Neil Jordan film when you go to see this."