Saoirse Una Ronan ( , ; born 12 April 1994) is an American-born Irish actress. Primarily known for her work in period dramas since adolescence, she has received various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for four Academy Awards and five British Academy Film Awards.
Ronan made her acting debut in 2003 on the Irish medical drama series The Clinic and her film debut in I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007). She had her breakthrough role as a precocious teenager in Atonement (2007), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her career progressed with starring roles as a murdered girl seeking closure in The Lovely Bones (2009) and a teenage assassin in Hanna (2011), and the supporting role of a baker in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Ronan received critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a homesick Irish immigrant in 1950s New York in Brooklyn (2015), the eponymous high school senior in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2017), and Jo March in Gerwig's Little Women (2019). She also won a Golden Globe Award for Lady Bird.
On stage, Ronan portrayed Abigail Williams in the 2016 Broadway revival of The Crucible and Lady Macbeth in the 2021 West End revival of The Tragedy of Macbeth. In 2016, she was featured by Forbes in two of their 30 Under 30 lists, and in 2020, The New York Times ranked her tenth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century.
Early life
Saoirse Una Ronan was born on 12 April 1994 in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, the only child of Irish parents Monica () and Paul Ronan, both from Dublin. Her father worked in construction and in bars before training as an actor in New York, and her mother worked as a nanny and had acted as a child. Her parents were initially undocumented immigrants who had left Ireland due to the recession of the 1980s, and struggled economically during their time in New York. The family moved back to Dublin when Ronan was three years old. She was raised in Ardattin, County Carlow, where she attended Ardattin National School. Her parents later had her tutored privately at home. In her early teens, Ronan was living again in Dublin with her parents, who settled in the seaside village of Howth. She was raised Catholic but has stated that she questioned her faith as a child.
Career
Early work and breakthrough (2003–2009) Ronan made her screen debut on Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, in the 2003 prime time medical drama The Clinic and appeared in the mini-serial Proof. During the same time, Ronan auditioned for the part of Luna Lovegood in the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), a role she lost out to fellow Irish actress Evanna Lynch. Ronan's first film was Amy Heckerling's romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, which was filmed in 2005. It was theatrically released in a few international markets in 2007 and given a direct-to-video release in the US in 2008, after it struggled to attract financing and several deals disintegrated during its post-production. In the film, Ronan portrayed the daughter of Michelle Pfeiffer's character and Paul Rudd co-starred as Pfeiffer's love interest. Joe Leydon of Variety labelled the film "desperately unfunny" but considered the interplay between Ronan and Pfeiffer's characters to be among the film's highlights.
At the age of 12, Ronan attended a casting call for Joe Wright's 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. She auditioned for and won the part of Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old aspiring novelist, who affects several lives by accusing her sister's lover of a crime he did not commit. She acted alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Budgeted at US$30 million, the film earned over US$129 million worldwide. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe called her "remarkable [and] eccentric", and Christopher Orr of The Atlantic wrote that she is "a marvel, elegantly capturing the narcissism and self-doubt that adhere to precocity". Ronan was nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the seventh youngest nominee in that category.
Ronan played the daughter of an impoverished psychic (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the supernatural thriller Death Defying Acts (2007) and starred as Lina Mayfleet, a heroic teenager who must save the inhabitants of an underground city named Ember in the fantasy film City of Ember (2008). Both films received a mixed critical reception and failed at the box office. In a review for the latter, the critic Stephen Holden took note of how Ronan's talents were wasted in it.