Saoirse Ronan

 ( 1994 Births ) 

She was raised in Ardattin, 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. Ronan cited Dame Maggie Smith as her greatest acting influence.

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.

In 2009, Ronan starred alongside Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci in Peter Jackson's supernatural drama The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Alice Sebold. Ronan played 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who, after being raped and murdered, watches from the after-life as her family struggles to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her quest for vengeance. Ronan and her family were originally hesitant for Ronan to accept the role due to its subject matter, but agreed after Jackson assured them that the film would not feature gratuitous scenes of rape and murder. Several sequences in the film relied on extensive special effects and much of Ronan's scenes were filmed in front of a blue screen. Reviewers were critical of the film's story and message, but Richard Corliss of Time believed that Ronan had successfully invested the gruesome tale with "immense gravity and grace". He later considered it to be the third best performance of the year. Sukhdev Sandhu of The Daily Telegraph considered Ronan to be the sole positive aspect of the production, writing that she "is simultaneously playful and solemn, youthful yet old beyond her years". The film was a box office disappointment. It earned Ronan a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role nomination.

In 2011, Ronan took part in a promotion for the Irish Film Institute's Archive Preservation Fund, in which she was digitally edited into popular Irish films of the past, as well as documentary footage. Ronan and Alexis Bledel played the titular assassins in Geoffrey S. Fletcher's action film Violet & Daisy (2011). Eric Goldman of IGN compared the film unfavourably to the work of Quentin Tarantino and commented that Ronan's abilities had surpassed the material. Peter Jackson approached Ronan to play an elf in The Hobbit film series, but she withdrew from the project due to scheduling conflicts. She was instead drawn to Neil Jordan's horror film Byzantium (2012), as the "dark, gothic and twisted" project provided her an opportunity to play a more complex and mature character. The film starred Gemma Arterton and her as mother-and-daughter vampires. Writing for Radio Times, the critic Alan Jones found the film to be an "evocative fairy tale that uses vampires as a prism to comment on humanity" and considered both Arterton and Ronan to be "radiant" in it.

In a 2013 film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's novel The Host, Ronan played the dual role of Melanie Stryder, a human rebel, and Wanderer, a parasitic alien. Critics disliked the film; Manohla Dargis termed it "a brazen combination of unoriginal science-fiction themes and young-adult pandering", but took note of an "otherworldly aspect to Ronan's screen presence, partly due to her stillness and her own translucent eyes, which can suggest grave intensity or utter detachment". In Kevin Macdonald's drama How I Live Now, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Meg Rosoff, Ronan played an American teenager sent to a remote farm in the United Kingdom during the outbreak of a fictional World War III. Olly Richards of Empire found Ronan to be in "typically watchable form" in it, but the film earned little at the box office. In her final film release of the year, Ronan voiced a barmaid named Talia in the critically panned animated film Justin and the Knights of Valour.

Ronan had two film releases in 2014 with widely diverse critical receptionsthe acclaimed comedy film The Grand Budapest Hotel from the director Wes Anderson and Ryan Gosling's panned directorial debut Lost River. In the former, an ensemble film headed by Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori, Ronan played the supporting part of the love interest to Revolori's character. It was the first project that she filmed without her parents accompanying her on set. The film earned over $174 million on a $25 million budget and was ranked by the BBC as one of the greatest films of the century. In the surrealistic fantasy film Lost River, Ronan played a mysterious young girl named Rat who owns a pet rat; Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent termed the film a "wildly self-indulgent affair" but praised Ronan's "tough but vulnerable" portrayal.

In 2016, Ronan moved to New York City to begin rehearsals for her debut appearance on Broadway theatre, in a revival of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. She took the role of Abigail Williams, a manipulative maid responsible for the death of 20 people accused of witchcraft. Based on the Salem witch trials, the play was directed by Ivo van Hove and ran for 125 performances. In preparation, she read Stacy Schiff's book The Witches: Salem, 1692, and collaborated closely with van Hove to empathise with her villainous character. Instead of relying on previous portrayals of Williams, Ronan played her as "more victim than victimizer". Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney considered Ronan to be "icy and commanding" and Linda Winer of Newsday commented that she had played the part "with the duplicity of a malevolent surfer-girl".

Ronan next voiced Marguerite Gachet in the biographical animated drama Loving Vincent (2017), and starred alongside Billy Howle as troubled newlyweds on their honeymoon in a film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel On Chesil Beach. In a mixed review of the latter film, Kate Erbland of IndieWire thought Ronan was underutilised in it and that her performance had been overshadowed by that of Howle. She starred in Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age film Lady Bird, in which she played the titular role of Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, a high school senior who shares a tumultuous relationship with her mother (played by Laurie Metcalf). It ranks among the best-reviewed films of all time on the review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Deeming Ronan's performance one of the best of the year, A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Ronan navigates each swerve in Lady Birds story with an uncanny combination of self-confidence and discovery. She is as spontaneous and unpredictable as an actual 17-year-old ... which suggests an altogether stupefying level of craft." She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical; and received Academy Award, BAFTA and SAG nominations for Best Actress.

In 2017, Ronan hosted an episode of the NBC sketch comedy Saturday Night Live, in which one of her sketches was criticised for its stereotypical portrayal of Irish people, and featured in the music video for Ed Sheeran's song "Galway Girl". The following year, she starred in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull, in which she played Nina, an aspiring actress. In a mixed review of the film, Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post praised Ronan's performance, writing that she "makes for an incandescent Nina, especially in her loopy final-act speech". She starred as Mary Stuart in the period drama Mary Queen of Scots, co-starring Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I of England. To maintain the distance between their characters, Ronan and Robbie did not interact with one another until filming their climactic encounter. Critic Todd McCarthy praised both actresses' performances and credited Ronan for "carrying the film with fiercely individualistic spirit".

After becoming aware of a forthcoming film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, Ronan campaigned to play the lead role of Jo March, an aspiring author in the American Civil War era. In preparation, she read Marmee & Louisa, a biography about Alcott and her mother; the cast rehearsed the script for two weeks, and filming took place on location in Concord, Massachusetts. Little Women was released in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair took note of how well Ronan had portrayed her character "in all her conflicted loyalty, the struggle between her familial contentment and her yearning for something more". The film grossed over $218 million to emerge as her highest-grossing release. Once again, she received Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. This made Ronanat 25 years and six months of agethe second youngest person to accrue four Oscar nominations, behind Jennifer Lawrence.

In 2020, Ronan portrayed the geologist Charlotte Murchison opposite Kate Winslet's Mary Anning in Francis Lee's Ammonite, a drama about a romantic relationship between the two women in the 1840s. The two actresses collaborated closely on the project, and they choreographed their own sex scenes. Steve Pond of TheWrap considered it to be "the most mature performance of Ronan's remarkable career". In the next year, Ronan had a small part in Wes Anderson's ensemble film The French Dispatch, about American journalists in France. She made her West End theatre debut at London's Almeida Theatre, performing as Lady Macbeth in a revival of Macbeth, opposite James McArdle. Ronan was intimidated by the experience of performing Shakespeare for the first time in her career, and drew inspiration from Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's marriage for portraying the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Alexandra Pollard of The Independent took note of Ronan's "rare skill to make Shakespeare’s beautiful but weighty words easy to understand".

Ronan, actor Jack Lowden, and producer Dominic Norris formed the production company Arcade Pictures. Under it, they produced The Outrun (2024), an adaptation of Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, directed by Nora Fingscheidt. Ronan also starred in the film as Rona (based on Liptrot); she found playing her character's struggle with alcoholism to be "very upsetting" as she had personally experienced the effects of addiction from those close to her. She also wrote several of her character's dialogues as Fingscheidt's script did not include specific ones. The Guardian Adrian Horton found her performance "at once titanic and quiet, and utterly convincing even in the very difficult art of acting drunk". Lowden and Ronan stepped down from Arcade Pictures soon after the film's premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Ronan next starred as a distraught mother searching for her missing son amidst the Blitz in Steve McQueen's drama film Blitz. Initially not keen to work in a war film, she was drawn to the project due to its focus on the mother-son relationship. She also sang a few songs for its soundtrack. For The Outrun, Ronan received BAFTA nominations for Best Actress and Outstanding British Film (as producer).

On June 5, 2025, it was announced that Ronan would star in the Talking Heads's classic "Psycho Killer" video for the band's 50th anniversary. She next led the comic thriller Bad Apples, playing a primary school teacher disrupted by an unruly student. On October 31, 2025 it was announced that Ronan will be portraying Linda McCartney in the upcoming The Beatles biographical film quadrilogy directed by Sam Mendes, due to be released in April 2028.