Saoirse Una Ronan (born April 12, 1994) is an Irish and American actress. Primarily noted for her roles in period dramas since adolescence, she has received numerous awards and nominations, including one Golden Globe Award and nominations for four Academy Awards and five British Academy Film Awards. She made her acting debut in 2003 on the Irish medical drama series The Clinic and made her feature debut in Amy Heckerling’s I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007), with Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, Sarah Alexander, Stacey Dash, Jon Lovitz, Fred Willard, and Tracey Ullman; followed by The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (2007), with Tom Berenger, Joely Richardson and Luke Ward-Wilkinson.
Ronan had her breakthrough in the role of a precocious teenager in Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007), with James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Vanessa Redgrave; which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making 13-year-old Ronan the seventh-youngest nominee in the category. She followed this with City of Ember (2008), with Harry Treadaway, Bill Murray, Mackenzie Crook, Martin Landau, Mary Kay Place, Toby Jones and Tim Robbins; and Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones (2009), with Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, and Michael Imperioli.
Films in the early 2010s include Peter Weir’s The Way Back (2010), with Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Alexandru Potocean, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Gustaf Skarsgård, Dragoș Bucur, and Mark Strong; Hanna (2011), with Eric Bana, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, and Cate Blanchett; Violet & Daisy (2011), with Alexis Bledel, Danny Trejo, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and James Gandolfini; Neil Jordan‘s Byzantium (2012), with Gemma Arterton, Sam Riley, and Jonny Lee Miller; Andrew Niccol’s The Host (2013), with Jake Abel, Max Irons, Frances Fisher, Chandler Canterbury, Diane Kruger, and William Hurt; How I Live Now (2013), with Tom Holland, Anna Chancellor, George MacKay, and Corey Johnson; Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), with Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Murray, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton. Tom Wilkinson, and Owen Wilson; and Ryan Gosling’s Lost River (2014), with Christina Hendricks, Iain De Caestecker, Matt Smith, Ben Mendelsohn, Barbara Steele, and Eva Mendes.
She garnered critical acclaim and second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for playing a homesick Irish immigrant in 1950s New York in John Crowley’s Brooklyn (2015), with Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, and Julie Walters. At age 21, it also made her the eighth-youngest Best Actress nominee. She also appeared in Stockholm, Pennsylvania (2015), with Cynthia Nixon, David Warshofsky, Jason Isaacs, and Rosalind Chao; and providing narration for the film Weepah Way for Now (2015), with Aly Michalka, AJ Michalka, and Mimi Rogers. On stage, she portrayed Abigail Williams in the 2016 Broadway revival of The Crucible. In the same year, she was featured by Forbes in two of their 30 Under 30 lists.
She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress and was nominated her second Academy Award for Best Actress as the eponymous high school senior in Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird (2017), with Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Lois Smith. This was followed by On Chesile Beach (2017), with Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff, Samuel West, and Adrian Scarborough; The Seagull (2018), with Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, Elisabeth Moss, Mare Winningham, Jon Tenney, Glenn Fleshler, Michael Zegen, Howle, and Brian Dennehy; and Mary Queen of Scots (2018), with Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, David Tennant, and Guy Pearce.
She earned her third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal Jo March in Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women (2019), with Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Letts, Bob Odenkirk, James Norton, Louis Garrel, and Chris Cooper. This was followed by Ammonite (2020), with Kate Winslet, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secăreanu, and Fiona Shaw; Anderson’s The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021), with Benicio del Toro, Brody, Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Amalric, Stephen Park, Murray, Wilson, Liev Schreiber, Norton, Dafoe, Christoph Waltz, Revolori, and Anjelica Huston. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her tenth on its list of the greatest actors of the twenty-first century.
Other films in the 2020s include See How They Run (2022), with Sam Rockwell, Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, and David Oyelowo; Garth Davis’s Foe (2023), with Paul Mescal and Aaron Pierre; and Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun (2024), with Paapa Essiedu, Stephen Dillane, and Saskia Reeves.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen rereleased in theaters)
- I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) – directed by Amy Heckerling
- The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (2007) – directed by Bill Clark
- Atonement (2007) – directed by Joe Wright
- Death Defying Acts (2007) – directed by Gillian Armstrong
- City of Ember (2008) – directed by Gil Kenan
- The Lovely Bones (2009) – directed by Peter Jackson
- Arrietty (2010)* – directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi – UK dub
- The Way Back (2010) – directed by Peter Weir
- Hanna (2011) – directed by Joe Wright
- Violet & Daisy (2011) – directed by Geoffrey Fletcher
- Byzantium (2012) – directed by Neil Jordan
- The Host (2013) – directed by Andrew Niccol
- How I Live Now (2013) – directed by Kevin Macdonald
- Justin and the Knights of Valour (2013) – directed by Manuel Sicilia
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)* – directed by Wes Anderson
- Muppets Most Wanted (2014)* – directed by James Bobin
- Lost River (2014) – directed by Ryan Gosling
- Stockholm, Pennsylvania (2015) – directed by Nikole Beckwith
- Weepah Way for Now (2015) – directed by Stephen Ringer
- Brooklyn (2015) – directed by John Crowley
- Loving Vincent (2017) – directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman
- Lady Bird (2017)* – directed by Greta Gerwig
- On Chesil Beach (2017) – directed by Dominic Cooke
- The Seagull (2018) – directed by Michael Mayer
- Mary Queen of Scots (2018) – directed by Josie Rourke
- Little Women (2019) – directed by Greta Gerwig
- Ammonite (2020) – directed by Francis Lee
- The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)* – directed by Wes Anderson
- See How They Run (2022) – directed by Tom George
- Foe (2023) – directed by Garth Davis
- The Outrun (2024) – directed by Nora Fingscheidt – also producer
- Blitz (202-) – directed by Steve McQueen
- Bad Apples (202-) – directed by Jonathan Etzler
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