Earning three Oscar nominations by the tender age of 23 has come with a cost for Saoirse Ronan. Saoirse, a Best Actress Oscar nominee this year for Lady Bird, told Grazia magazine that she used to pine for the life of a carefree teen.
“I feel like I missed out on a fun, typical, goofy teenage life,” she said. “I really wanted to go to NYU for a long time. And then I realized it was mainly because I wanted that social aspect.”
She’s not lamenting her choices – far from it. And Lady Bird’s writer/director Greta Gerwig has been a helpful and important mentor.
“Greta says it’s your responsibility to learn. It’s not down to a teacher, a school. And anything that you learn, you’re not memorizing it to pass an exam, you’re doing it because you actually have an interest in it,” Saoirse said.
Read More: Saoirse Ronan's undocumented Irish parents and her start in the Bronx
Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig on the set of Lady Bird. Photo: A24
A topic the two spoke about a lot is feminism, hugely timely given the sea change happening in Hollywood and other walks of life. And Saoirse is all in.
“I feel like feminism has gone from quite a considered thing for me to something that is just in my bones,” she shared. “We’ve gone from saying, ‘Yes, we really need to make a change and we’ve all got to stick together,’ to ‘Oh f***, we really need to make a change’. Now more than ever feminism is at the core of my life.”
The New York-born, Irish-raised Saoirse also paid tribute in the interview to actresses working in TV, and what they’ve done to put themselves out there.
Read more: Check out Golden Globe winner Saoirse Ronan’s TV debut on RTÉ aged 9
She said, "It's mainly the women in TV who I think have gotten us to a point where film and TV are beginning to cross over now with shows like Big Little Lies.
"And what Lena Dunham, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did, all these people who were probably not being given the work that they deserved, so they went out and wrote it themselves. They made a success out of it and they made money out of it. Men pay attention to money."
Indeed they do. And fashionistas will undoubtedly take note of Saoirse, draped in a Gucci jumpsuit, on the cover of the latest issue of AnOther which drops this week.
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