What are the best Saoirse Ronan performances of all time?

With four Oscar nominations before the age of 30, Ronan has moved from child prodigy to fully realized screen presence, inhabiting characters across centuries and continents. Which performance do you consider her best?

Lady Bird (2017)

Ronan earned her third Oscar nomination for her incandescent performance as Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson, a teenage girl chafing against her Sacramento upbringing.

1/12

Little Women (2019)

Ronan plays Jo March with fierce intelligence and warmth in Greta Gerwig's triumphant adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel.

2/12

Brooklyn (2015)

Ronan is quietly magnificent as Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant torn between two continents and two possible lives in this tender period romance.

3/12

Atonement (2007)

Ronan received her first Oscar nomination at age 13 for her chilling portrait of Briony Tallis, a child whose lie destroys two lives — and the guilt she carries forever.

4/12

Hanna (2011)

Ronan plays a teenage girl raised as an assassin in the Arctic wilderness who is released into the world — a lethal force wrapped in childlike wonder.

5/12

The Lovely Bones (2009)

Ronan plays Susie Salmon, a murdered 14-year-old who narrates the story of her family and her killer from her personal heaven.

6/12

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

Ronan plays Mary Stuart — charismatic, passionate, and politically outmaneuvered — as she navigates the treacherous politics of 16th-century Scotland and England.

7/12

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Ronan plays Agatha, the loyal, kind-hearted bakery girl with a Mexico-shaped birthmark who helps her lover Zero solve a murder mystery in Wes Anderson's confection.

8/12

On Chesil Beach (2017)

Ronan plays Florence Ponting in this devastating adaptation of Ian McEwan's novella about a couple's honeymoon night and the misunderstanding that destroys their future.

9/12

The Outrun (2024)

Ronan delivers one of her career-best performances as Rona, an addict returning to the remote Orkney Islands to recover and reconnect with herself.

10/12

See How They Run (2022)

Ronan is deadpan perfection as a rookie constable paired with a cynical inspector to solve a murder backstage at a 1950s West End Agatha Christie production.

11/12

Byzantium (2012)

Ronan plays Eleanor, a 200-year-old vampire living as a teenager, in Neil Jordan's gothic vampire drama that reimagines the mythology with feminist undertones.

12/12