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Two unexpected new parts, both of which are generating awards buzz, may soon upend that perception. In Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, which Ronan coproduced, she gives a raw portrayal of a woman struggling to get sober. Her husband, the actor Jack Lowden who’s also a coproducer, read the memoir the film is based on and suggested it could be an onscreen vehicle for Ronan. The role was personal, she says, because loved ones of hers have shared that struggle. She has come to see addiction as an illness, as opposed to a character flaw. “Especially if you’re young, it’s very hard not to see it in that way,” she says. “Because if you don’t suffer from your brain essentially being altered by a substance, then you don’t understand why they can’t just choose not to live this life.
You don’t understand why they don’t want to, or don’t feel like it’s worth choosing you over it. There’s a lot of confusion that’s born out of it, and resentment, which is what I had, and I still have to a certain extent.” Despite her initial hesitation, she says, “the logical part of me knew that by stepping into the psychology of someone going through it, I could take some of the sting out of it for myself. It really was a way for me to heal from my own wounds.”
She also has a pivotal role in Steve McQueen’s epic World War II drama Blitz, which tells a far less sanitized story than most films about the era. McQueen will, she says, “always take a story that we think we know and show us why we don’t.” Ronan plays the mother of a biracial child, and the movie doesn’t shy away from the racism that existed behind England’s “Keep calm and carry on” front. It marks her first time playing a mother, and her first time singing onscreen (she studied with a vocal coach to prepare).
As her career has progressed, Ronan has come to feel freer to be a little off-kilter. “Even what I’m doing now with my face,” she says, scrunching up her delicate features to demonstrate. “I think sometimes actors feel like they can’t make something super-expressive, because it’s unbecoming on camera.” She’s also in the process of writing a short film that she plans to direct. Fellow actor-turned-director Greta Gerwig has, as you might expect, been a huge influence on Ronan’s desire to be behind the camera. Ronan has appreciated “working with her and seeing her grow exponentially from one project to the next.” Sadly, she and fellow Gerwig muse Timothée Chalamet couldn’t make appearances in Barbie due to scheduling conflicts. “He and I haven’t come to terms with the fact that she’s made a film without us. It’s hard to swallow.”
On playing a flawed character in The Outrun
I haven’t played anyone like that since Briony Tallis [her character from Atonement]. And I was so ready for it. I felt confident enough in my ability, but also confident enough in who I was. I didn’t feel like I was being held down by a need to only play likable people.
Because I got to shape it creatively, I just gave less of a fuck about things being palatable. I really responded to Lena Dunham’s characters in Girls, who are arseholes sometimes, but we’ve all got the capability for that. I just started watching Hacks, and I’m like, “These girls are selfish. They’re self-involved. They’ve got massive egos, but they always have redeeming qualities.” We’ve gotten into this habit of filtering our personalities so much, reducing them to a line on Instagram or Twitter. And to be able to have the opportunity to go, “Look, this person can be fully formed and have shitty qualities and also redeeming ones, and let’s honor all of that”—I’m at the point in my life where I’m like, “That’s what I want to see onscreen.”
On being pitted against other young actresses when she was coming up
For a while, it was me and Dakota Fanning. And I would love for Dakota and I to work together. She’s one of the reasons why I got into acting in the first place, because when I was really young, she was working from such an early age, and I used to watch her stuff….So to feel like, “Oh, there’s space for all of us now,” where there’s still healthy competition, I think it’s great.
On how her generation is changing the culture of Hollywood
I think the strike had a massive effect on how we view the industry. That, paired with people knowing their worth a little bit more, or feeling like there’s an environment now where they can band together, and they don’t need to be against one another.
I’m seeing from the inside how over the younger generation are [when it comes to] some older studio execs and producers and directors who are just narcissists and control freaks. And we don’t want to work in that way anymore.
On meeting Chappell Roan
She was like, “Oh, people tell me that we look alike.” And I was like, “Honestly, whatever you want, Chappell. Yes, we can look alike. That’s fine.”
On being a private person with no social media
I like that people don’t know my business. I just fundamentally believe that they don’t need to. I’m an actor, and the side of me that’s out there that I want people to see is in the work.
I also think I was very lucky that when I was coming up, it was right before social media really took off. I can see, with the slightly younger generation, how they’ve felt the pressure to have that presence. And to be honest, that is justified, because I’ve been in audition rooms where I haven’t gotten a role because I didn’t have enough Twitter followers or whatever.
And in the end, I was like, “Okay, well, I don’t want to be in a movie like that, anyway.” But when you’re coming up and nobody knows who you are, and you’re trying to make a name for yourself in the world that we’re in now, I can understand how you can give that too much importance. I was lucky that I just got past that. It doesn’t make sense to me why I would share my personal life with people I don’t know.
On the personal side of portraying alcoholism onscreen
It’s helped me to understand it. It’s still hard. This is what I like about the film—that it’s not as simple as “All is forgiven.” The pain is still there, so it’s hard to just move on from that. But I understand more fully now, and the anger for me is not there in the way that it was. And this is why Jack knew it was the right project for us to get involved in….It was a way for me to turn it into something positive and beautiful, and something that we could all connect to and discuss. So it feels like it’s had a purpose.
How this role changed her own relationship with alcohol
I was never a binge drinker or a massive partier or anything like that, probably because of my own experience of seeing people close to me change when they were drunk. But I have willingly, consciously put myself in social situations where I could very easily have a drink, to almost have it act as a balm. And I’ve removed that, just so that I can feel like, “Oh, I don’t need this, and I can be in a social setting without this as a crutch.”
I have noticed there are a lot of young people my age who are willingly becoming sober, not necessarily because they have a craving for it or they have an addiction issue, but just because they don’t want to rely on it as much.
How Blitz differs from the typical WWII film
It wasn’t until I spoke to [Steve McQueen] that I realized that this wasn’t going to be just another Second World War film where we’ll follow the men on the ground, and I’m just the wife of or the sister of, which I never was interested in. And that’s no disrespect to anything that’s come before.
This whole rose-tinted view that we’ve all created about any war in order to perpetuate the idea that it’s a good thing is a fallacy, but there’s still humanity to be found as well.
On playing a mother for the first time in Blitz and her relationship with first-time actor Elliott Heffernan, who plays her son
To take a topic that is so universal and we feel like we know, and reframe it in the shape of a child and a woman—people’s defenses are down. They’re softer to it somehow. I just thought it was really genius to go about it in that way.
To be honest, when Steve offered me the job, it felt like a stretch to play a mother, even though, of course, if I was that age back then, I probably would’ve had three kids. So I think my way into it, especially because she had George when she was quite young, was that I needed to stay connected to her youth. There’s a very strong element of friendship to their relationship. Yes, she’s his mother and his protector, but also his friend. And I don’t feel like an adult a lot of the time.
I spent my childhood playing the child of someone else. And I could tell, even from an early age, the actors I worked with who genuinely enjoyed sharing scenes with me. You can see the people who feel comfortable with kids and the ones who don’t. And so I wanted that to come across more than anything else—that I was someone who was aligned with this kid, and that we were pals in this. It’s probably influenced by my own relationship with my mom, where she was absolutely the disciplinarian, she was the boss, but at the same time, we were and are best friends.
Saoirse Ronan has been making her way on the silver screen since she was 13, and has the Academy Award nominations to show for it.
Here are some of her best roles to date:
BLITZ (2024)
Told through the eyes of a child during the events of the London bombing in World War II, Ronan’s performance in the Steve McQueen film is compelling.
THE OUTRUN (2024)
After living life on the edge in London, Rona (Ronan) returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where she grew up, in an attempt to heal the past.
LITTLE WOMEN (2019)
Ronan plays Jo March in the famous story set in 19th-century Massachusetts, where the March sisters cross the threshold into womanhood.
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (2018)
Mary Stuart’s (Ronan’s) attempt to overthrow Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) finds her condemned to years of imprisonment before facing execution.
LADY BIRD (2017)
Ronan plays a fiercely independent teenager trying to get away from her complicated mother and unemployed father in Sacramento, California.
BROOKLYN (2015)
Playing an Irish immigrant who lands in 1950s Brooklyn, Eilis (Ronan) quickly falls into a romance with a local. But her past soon catches up with her.
THE LOVELY BONES (2009)
A murdered young girl (Ronan) watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. Ronan’s multi-award-winning performance put her in the spotlight.
ATONEMENT (2007)
Ronan plays 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis, who accuses her older sister’s lover of a crime he did not commit – changing lives in the process.
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