Saoirse Ronan is arguably one of the greatest actresses of our generation, but the Irish actress has said that she was lucky to get her roles.
First arriving on the scene as a 13-year-old in Atonement, the now 24-year-old has been nominated for 3 Academy Awards.
But, as she told The Guardian, parts have not always been easy to come by.
“There are more films being made now about girls and women, but even six years ago, people didn’t know what to do with an older teenage girl who was about to go into her 20s,” says the actress who will next be seen as the lead in Mary Queen of Scots.
“No scripts were being written about that experience, which I find mad, because so much has happened to me in the past few years. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to write about that. But yes, I’d been told by older actors: you’re grand now, but when you get to 18 there won’t be anything – and there wasn’t. There was nothing. I was lucky The Grand Budapest Hotel came along, but mostly it was just the girlfriend, the neighbour, the sister: characters that are not fleshed out. So when they asked if I wanted to play a Scottish queen… it was brilliant.”
And brilliant, she is!
