Saoirse Ronan: School plays were the highlight of my year - I used to count to make sure I had the most lines

Driven: Saoirse Ronan was always ambitious at school
AnOther Magazine
Alistair Foster12 February 2018
The Weekender

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Oscar favourite Saoirse Ronan says she has always been driven — from playing Gaelic football on the boys’ team to counting the number of lines she received in school plays to make sure she had the most.

The star, 23, won best actress at the Golden Globes and is nominated in the same category at the Baftas and Academy Awards for her role in coming-of-age comedy drama Lady Bird.

Ronan, who moved to Ireland from Brooklyn as a young girl, told AnOther magazine: “I went to a tiny country school, 50 kids in the whole school.

"There were so few children that everyone got a part — sometimes kids got two parts because there were more parts than pupils.

Rising star: Saoirse Ronan has been nominated for three Oscars  
AnOther Magazine

"The play was the highlight of the year for me, I loved it. I used to get the script, highlight my lines and count all of them to check I was in the top five — ‘OK, I’ve got 40 lines, that’s pretty good going’.”

She had her acting breakthrough at the age of 13, with a part in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement opposite Keira Knightley.

Read the full interview with Saoirse in Another Magazine
AnOther Magazine

The part earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress — but her career could have taken a different direction.

She said: “In terms of [the film that made] ... me take acting seriously enough to pursue it as a career, it was Atonement — because it had so much gravity to it, the work was so good.

"I’d also auditioned for this action film, which would have paid a lot more and could have been a big commercial success or whatever, and it was up to me to decide which one I was going to do, and I chose Atonement.

“Honestly, my parents always left it down to me. And I’ve always had a good sense of what I wanted work-wise and otherwise, a good sense of what was right for me.”

She added: “From being a kid I’ve always been, ‘Well if a boy can do it I can do it’. When I was a kid, I’d play Gaelic football on the boys’ team. I was like, ‘I can do it if they can!’

"I’m definitely the type of person that likes to have a goal. If I’m in the gym, I like to know how many reps I have to do, and unless I’m about to die, I’ll get there!”

The full interview is in AnOther magazine SS18 issue, out Thursday.

Saoirse Ronan - style file

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