Saoirse Ronan

Saoirse Ronan (born April 12, 1994, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an Irish American actress who was praised for her ability to subtly convey the complex inner life of the characters she portrayed. Ronan’s notable films include Atonement (2007), Brooklyn (2015), Lady Bird (2017), and Little Women (2019), all of which earned her Academy Award nominations.

Childhood

During an economic downturn in the 1980s, Ronan’s parents left Dublin and became undocumented immigrants in the United States. They settled in New York City, where her mother worked as a nanny and her father worked in construction and as a bartender; he later was a stage actor. Ronan was born in 1994, and, when she was three years old, the family moved back to Ireland. They settled in the small village of Ardattin in County Carlow, and Ronan attended Ardattin National School for a time but was largely homeschooled. Her career began when she appeared as a child in a story arc (2003–04) in the medical TV series The Clinic. In 2005 she acted in the crime series Proof.

Early films: Atonement and The Lovely Bones

Ronan made her film debut in Amy Heckerling’s romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, filmed in 2005 but not released until 2007. However, her true arrival was her portrayal of 13-year-old Briony Tallis, who misunderstands her older sister’s romance and tells a lie that destroys several lives, in Atonement (2007), based on the novel by Ian McEwan. For her performance, Ronan was nominated for an Academy Award.

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She next appeared in two lesser films, the period drama Death Defying Acts (2007) and the sci-fi children’s adventure City of Ember (2008). More notable was Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones (2009), the film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel about a murdered girl who watches her family and killer from the afterlife; Ronan earned a BAFTA nomination for best actress. After a supporting role in the escape drama The Way Back (2010), she won widespread praise for her riveting portrayal of a teenage girl raised in isolation and trained as a self-sufficient assassin by her father in Hanna (2011). Her next few films failed critically and at the box office, though she had a supporting role as a hotel maid in Wes Anderson’s acclaimed ensemble comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Booklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women

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Ronan’s understated and sensitive performance in the lead role in Brooklyn (2015)—based on Colm Tóibín’s lyrical novel about a young Irish woman who emigrates to Brooklyn and is then called home to Ireland—was evocative and absorbing and earned her a best-actress Oscar nomination. She made her Broadway debut in 2016, starring in an acclaimed production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Ronan earned a third Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a teen girl trying to transcend her small-town life in Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical Lady Bird (2017).

More praise followed for her performance as Nina in The Seagull, the film version of Anton Chekhov’s play, and as the ill-fated title character in Mary Queen of Scots (both 2018). Ronan earned another Oscar nod when she portrayed the strong-minded and tomboyish Jo March in Gerwig’s highly praised Little Women (2019). She later starred with Kate Winslet in the period romance Ammonite (2020). In 2021 Ronan reunited with Anderson on The French Dispatch, and she later appeared in the 1950s whodunit See How They Run (2022). After these comedies, Ronan shifted gears—and earned some of the best reviews of her career—with The Outrun, a drama about a recovering alcoholic who moves back home.

Personal life

In 2024 Ronan married British actor Jack Lowden. The couple had costarred in Mary Queen of Scots.

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