Culture
All The Best Saoirse Ronan Performances To Stream
She was an icon far before she started starring in films alongside Timothée Chalamet
Saoirse Ronan is a chameleon of an actor — able to play buttoned-up period piece characters in Brooklyn or Little Women as easy as she’s able to loosen up and play fun, fiery roles, like Christine in Lady Bird. Think of her final form as the relatable weird girl, one who teachers wouldn’t describe as “a pleasure to have in class,” even though she’s secretly the favorite.
The Clinic (2003)
Ronan made her acting debut at the age of nine in this extremely popular Irish medical TV show that she acts in alongside her father, Paul Ronan. You might need subtitles to understand anything they’re saying, but Ronan is adorable as a very serious child who has to hang out in the hospital all the time. (Tubi)
Atonement (2007)
Ronan’s breakout role was at just 13 years old, earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in this dark period piece starring James McAvoy and Kiera Knightley, based on the Ian McEwan crime novel. She plays kind of a weird kid (who ends up completely derailing multiple lives) and much of the film feels like prep for her much later role in Little Women, with lots of writing in journals and running through English fields of tall grass. (YouTube)
I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)
This straight-to-DVD rom com with Michelle Pfeifer and Paul Rudd features Ronan as a guitar-strumming teen who sings about how women have to lose weight to be famous and who dances to Britney Spears in her mirror. It’s a character for weird girls everywhere, and make me ponder how, in another universe, Ronan could have been Hannah Montana instead of Miley. (Amazon)
Hanna (2011)
In one of Ronan’s fiercest roles, she plays 15-year-old girl who grows up in the Arctic wilderness and is raised to be an assassin. Ronan masters a kind of detached psychopath energy that outdoes even Villanelle in Killing Eve. And she did all her own stunts — we don’t talk about this movie enough! (Peacock)
Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Hands down the best part of Wes Anderson’s over-the-top-even-for-him Grand Budapest Hotel, Ronan plays the bellboy’s lover. One of the sweetest frames of the whole movie is the face she makes after he gifts her a book while on a sweet date to a carousel, aglow in pink light. What’s even better is that somehow Ronan escaped being in every Wes Anderson movie like so many of the other actors he uses — though she will star alongside Timothée Chalamet’s tiny mustache in French Dispatch... (YouTube)
Brooklyn (2015)
Ronan has a classic look that suits her well to really any period piece, and she’s fabulous in Brooklyn, playing a young Irish woman who emigrates to the U.S. to work and falls in love with a cute Italian. We love any role where Ronan can be Irish — and fingers crossed she’ll star in something Sally Rooney-related soon. (YouTube)
Lady Bird (2017)
The movie that made fellow weird girls who dated gay boys and went to Catholic high schools everywhere fall in love with Ronan (Oh? Just me then?), Lady Bird is one of the actor’s most iconic roles, which landed her a Golden Globe and ensured that people will dress like her for Halloween from now until the end of time. Most importantly, she got to be yelled at by Laurie Metcalf and kiss Chalamet, two crucial items on my bucket list. (Netflix)
Little Women (2019)
Sure, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation — which starred Chalamet, Laura Dern, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson and Meryl Streep?! — might have been a little Oscar bait-y, but Ronan brought her quintessential spitfire to Jo March, and we can’t get enough of the scene where she says women have minds and souls, as well as just hearts, and that she’s fed up of people thinking women are only made for love — but she’s still lonely? It’s called containing multitudes. (Starz)
Ammonite (2020)
Ronan and Kate Winslet play lovers in the 1840s in this steamy film about depressed women that gives us Portrait of a Lady On Fire energy, with lots of stolen glances between the two cloudy beaches, subtle interlacing of fingers, and tense conversations in dim rooms over cups of tea. (Hulu)