SAOIRSE RONAN
Date of Birth: April 12, 1994
The daughter of Irish actor Paul Ronan and his wife, Monica, Saoirse (pronounced Sersha) Ronan spent time on movie sets since she was a baby and was even carried around by Brad Pitt on the set of The Devil's Own (1996).
Born in New York and raised in Ireland, Saoirse made her screen debut as a recurring character in the TV series The Clinic from 2003 to 2004. She then took over the role of Orla Borland in the BBC series Proof in 2005 before making her big screen debut in I Could Never Be Your Woman opposite Paul Rudd and Michelle Pfeiffer. Filmed in 2005, it wasn't released until years later.
In the critically-acclaimed film Atonement (2007), filmed in 2006, she played Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old who destroys lives when she tells a lie. For her performance, she received nominations from many of the most prestigious societies in the film industry, including the Golden Globes, Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards. She won "Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role" from the Phoenix Film Critics Society.
Saoirse has since played Catherine Zeta-Jones' daughter in the period film Death Defying Acts (2008). In City of Ember (2008), she joined Bill Murray and Tim Robbins, and in director Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones (2009), she once again played a difficult role, as a girl who was brutally raped and murdered and watched the effects of her death on her family from Heaven. She took on the title role in Hanna (2011), as a teenager raised by her father to be an assassin.
She lives in two hours from Dublin in Carlow Country with her parents and border collie, Sassy.