Saoirse Ronan’s con­stant com­ing of age

It is with a juve­nile excite­ment bely­ing her 22 years of age that Saoirse shuf­fles from foot to foot in a con­ve­nience store in the lat­ter half of Lady Bird. ​“It’s my birth­day today,” she insists on telling the cashier, ​“which is why all these things. I can buy them.” She per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the new­ly 18-year-old drunk on the pow­er of being able to buy scratch­cards and cig­a­rettes, even if they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly like them. Her turn as Lady Bird – whose birth name is Chris­tine – is so believ­ably earnest. Her long­ing and bore­dom seep through the screen as Ronan rolls out of a mov­ing car to avoid an argu­ment with her moth­er, stands in the mid­dle of the pave­ment to shriek after her first kiss and lies that one of the huge hous­es close to the school is hers.

Lady Bird is so effec­tive as a film about teenage girls, moth­ers and daugh­ters because it feels so lived. The char­ac­ters have argu­ments that we can remem­ber hav­ing – Lady Bird is snip­py as she shops for prom dress­es because she feels strange wear­ing them. She tries out for school musi­cals and buys for­bid­den things at the gro­cery store and wants to be inter­est­ing so bad­ly that she changes the way she is and regrets it later.

Com­pare this per­for­mance to what we have seen so far in her upcom­ing film The Out­run, the trail­er of which includes a poignant line spo­ken by Saoirse: ​“There is only so much height any wave can sus­tain before it comes crash­ing down.”

Based on a 2016 mem­oir by Amy Lip­trot, the film fol­lows 29-year-old Rona as she leaves her life in Lon­don and treat­ment for alco­hol abuse and returns home to Orkney. Although lone­ly, she takes solace in the wild­ness of the sea and land, try­ing to heal from the events that led to her sit­u­a­tion and addic­tion. This may seem like heavy sub­ject mat­ter com­pared to that of Ronan’s oth­er well-known works – she is per­haps best known in recent years for her per­for­mances in com­ing-of-age films such as Lit­tle Women (2019) and Lady Bird (2017), both direct­ed by Gre­ta Gerwig.

Saoirse Ronan is no stranger to con­trast when it comes to her films. For the last ten years or so of her career, she has repeat­ed­ly jux­ta­posed the fiery ado­les­cent and the estab­lished young woman, star­ring in Brook­lyn and then Lady Bird, On Chesil Beach and then Lit­tle Women. To con­tin­ue her pat­tern of alter­nat­ing com­ing-of-age and his­tor­i­cal pieces, after The Out­run Ronan is also set to star in Blitz, set in the heart of the Sec­ond World War, which pre­mieres on 9 Octo­ber at Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val. While every actor has to dis­play an ele­ment of range, it is the con­trast between these two spe­cif­ic gen­res that is so fas­ci­nat­ing about her career.

The thing that Ronan brings to all of these, that ties them togeth­er, is her abil­i­ty to smooth­ly depict a char­ac­ter under­go­ing a great trans­for­ma­tion through­out the course of the film. Rona’s hair, dyed a bright and bril­liant blue dur­ing her time in Lon­don, slow­ly grows out to its nat­ur­al colour as she returns to the islands and to her­self. Lady Bird, wear­ing a name she gave to her­self in rejec­tion of the one her par­ents chose for her, grows more assured that she needn’t force her­self to be more inter­est­ing and begins once more to intro­duce her­self as Chris­tine. Jo March comes to see that her sis­ters’ dreams are as valid as her own and sees her nov­el published.

Ronan has clear­ly set­tled into her abil­i­ty to play old­er char­ac­ters, but many of her best-known per­for­mances now are with­in these com­ing-of-age pieces. In them she plays the uncer­tain and the fiery, those who have not yet found their place in the world. Even in The Out­run she plays some­body who has lost her place in the world, now find­ing it once again. Per­haps it is sur­pris­ing that this works time and time again – for years there have been grum­blings with­in the film and tele­vi­sion indus­tries about teenage char­ac­ters being cast as adults and feel­ing uncon­vinc­ing. Not when it comes to Ronan. The rea­son for this lies, per­haps, in how many of us first met her: in her debut as a child actress.

Saoirse Ronan’s film debut occurred in 2007, when she was only eleven years old. The film in ques­tion was I Could Nev­er Be Your Woman, in which she plays the protagonist’s daugh­ter, Izzie, a girl crush­ing on a boy in her class and vying to win him over. In the same year she played Briony in Atone­ment, an infat­u­at­ed teenage girl who makes a vital mis­take that gets the wrong man con­vict­ed of a crime – the role to score her an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion at just twelve. Ronan has now gar­nered four such nom­i­na­tions, all before thir­ty – the first for Best Sup­port­ing Actress and the sub­se­quent three for Best Actress.

A role less­er known than her Atone­ment break­out, per­haps, is also her first lead role – as the spir­it­ed Lina Mayfleet in the 2008 sci-fi adven­ture flick City of Ember. Com­pared with her pre­vi­ous roles, Lina is one of the char­ac­ters with the most agency and dri­ve in the film’s sto­ry – it is up to her, along with a class­mate, to res­cue their com­mu­ni­ty from the dete­ri­o­rat­ing under­ground city they have been shel­ter­ing in after a glob­al dis­as­ter. Live­ly and deter­mined, through Lina Saoirse could dis­play all the desir­able qual­i­ties of a pro­tag­o­nist and a char­ac­ter actor. Despite the film’s mixed recep­tion, even neg­a­tive reviews could agree on one thing – what­ev­er their thoughts on the world­build­ing and sto­ry, Ronan’s per­for­mance was the strongest ele­ment. She was brand­ed by Cin­emablend as a ​“fan­tas­tic hero­ine” even in a poor review.

Lit­tle sur­prise, then, that after this lead role came anoth­er – Susie Salmon in The Love­ly Bones. This was a much dark­er film, cer­tain­ly, with Ronan play­ing a mur­dered girl watch­ing over her loved ones. Even in this role, though, she is not pas­sive. Though she is con­fined to the after­life she endures her own con­flict as to whether she should try to reveal her killer to her fam­i­ly. A dead girl is played as still being full of life, owing to the vibrance of Ronan’s performance.

The num­ber of icon­ic roles she has been known for from an ear­ly age could, per­haps, con­tribute to her pop­u­lar­i­ty for these com­ing-of-age films – it is easy to believe that Ronan still inhab­its these years when we have seen her come of age on the big screen all this time. Ever since her onscreen debut we have seen her devel­op as an actor, try­ing out a range of roles from Mary Queen of Scots to a teenage assas­sin. Every time we see her explore this theme of find­ing one’s own voice it feels real­is­tic because we have seen it before and watched her triumph.

Saoirse Ronan was described, by an inter­view­er for Time Out in 2013, as ​“the most teenage teenage actress” they had ever met, buy­ing Urban Out­fit­ters bomber jack­ets, wear­ing Doc Martens and remain­ing close with her par­ents, who had accom­pa­nied her to the set of every one of her films until she was old enough to be unat­tend­ed. ​“Child stars are not meant to grow up nor­mal,” the inter­view­er not­ed, ​“they’re meant to grow up wild like weeds, into tan­gled mess­es. Not this child star.”

Per­haps it is in part the sup­port­ive and safe envi­ron­ment Ronan had as a teen actor which allows her to thrive with­in the com­ing-of-age genre today – it is eas­i­er, sure­ly, to be in touch with those years of her life when her fam­i­ly worked for her to have some­thing approach­ing nor­mal­i­ty with­in them. Sure­ly more actors should be allowed the space to have these typ­i­cal com­ing-of-age expe­ri­ences for her­self, rather than being as iso­lat­ed and idolised as many child stars in the indus­try are made to be. Ronan’s com­ing-of-age films such as Lady Bird feel sin­cere and human because her own expe­ri­ences, it seems, have been too.

As com­pelling as Ronan’s more emo­tion­al­ly fraught per­for­mances are, her dry assured­ness means that one of her most enjoy­able roles in recent years has been in the 2022 who­dun­nit film See How They Run – will she extend her remark­able range to some more com­e­dy next?