‘She’s one of the reasons why I got into acting in the first place’: Saoirse Ronan shares which actress Hollywood made her compete with early in her career

As a successful child actress, Saoirse Ronan quickly found herself in the enviable position of competing with actresses she once idolized for roles. 

Ronan spoke with ELLE magazine for the Women in Hollywood issue about how she was often pitted against other child stars early in her career, naming Dakota Fanning as one example. Born just months apart and now both 30 years old, Fanning and Ronan both rose to prominence as children in the 2000s, and were often cast in dramatic films alongside critically acclaimed adult actors. Although the two were often pitted against each other, Ronan says working alongside Fanning is a dream of hers.

“I would love for Dakota and I to work together,” Ronan told ELLE. “She’s one of the reasons why I got into acting in the first place.” By the time Ronan had her breakthrough role in 2007’s Atonement, acting alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, and again in 2009’s The Lovely Bones, Fanning was already a bonafide star with critical acclaim and box-office success. Fanning’s breakout role was in the 2001 film I Am Sam alongside Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer, and she followed it up with parts in projects like Uptown Girls and War of the Worlds. While much of Fanning’s early work wasn’t exactly child-friendly, her career inspired Ronan and other young actresses to pursue acting themselves. 

Going up for roles against the person who made you want to become an actress couldn’t have been easy but Ronan welcomes the competition. “[I] feel like, ‘Oh, there’s space for all of us now,’ where there’s still healthy competition, I think it’s great.” It’s rare to see the two actresses vying for the same roles now but in our opinion, Hollywood thrives when talented actresses inspire each other to be better, even more so when they act alongside each other. 

While there’s no news of Ronan and Fanning sharing the same screen anytime soon — perhaps Greta Gerwig is penning the script right now to make up for the absence of a Ronan cameo in Barbie — Ronan is busy promoting her two newest films, The Outrun and Blitz. Both are serious fare designed for generating Oscar buzz and her participation in both films is not only born out of Ronan’s desire for an Academy Award but also out of her desire to challenge herself.

The Outrun sees Ronan tackling the role of a young woman struggling with alcohol addiction throughout different periods of her life. She told ELLE the part was personal for her as people close to her have struggled with alcoholism in the past. Though initially hesitant to accept the part, she recognized that “by stepping into the psychology of someone going through it, I could take some of the sting out of it myself. It really was a way for me to heal from my own wounds.”

Ronan was also hesitant to star in Steve McQueen’s Blitz. As a rule, since Atonement she has stayed away from films about war, but she came around when McQueen convinced her “that this wasn’t going to be just another Second World War film where we’ll follow the men on the ground, and I’m just the wife or the sister.” She plays a single mother of a biracial child in World War II-era London, marking the first time Ronan plays a mother on screen. Ronan has received four Academy Award nominations as of writing but has yet to win an Oscar. With these two films, she intends to change that. Whether or not she wins, Ronan proves she has the skills to compete with her fellow actors.