These 10 Fascinating Facts About Saoirse Ronan Prove She's 1 of a Kind

When Saoirse was born in the Bronx, her mother, Monica, was a nanny and her father, Paul, was an aspiring actor, and together they had "about 20 cents to their name or something stupid like that," she told The Gentlewoman back in 2015. Once Saoirse's career began to take off, Monica accompanied her as a chaperone on set. "She was the perfect movie mam," Saoirse continued. "She wasn't one of those crazy mothers who was living vicariously through me, or so crazy protective that she wouldn't let anyone do anything. But she protected me and kept me away from all the grown-up stuff that can kind of ruin you a bit when you're a kid."

According to Saoirse, she was never in danger of succumbing to the temptation of drugs, alcohol, or partying, as her parents were always there to keep her grounded. "I had such a brilliant mam and dad and great agents with their own kids, and they were all very aware of how it could turn out, and there is no way in hell my mam would have ever allowed anything to happen," she explained to The Guardian during a December 2018 interview. "If she'd seen any flash of that, I would have been pulled out. I had a wonderful combination of being encouraged, and being brought back to normal life as soon as the job was done."

Though she was born in the Bronx, Saoirse and her Ireland-born parents moved back to Dublin when she was three, which is how she developed her Irish accent. Of course, her roles (like when she played the titular role in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird) often entail taking on different accents, and for Saoirse, changing her accent helps her take on that different role. "It's how I get into the character," she explained to Harper's Bazaar in January 2019. "What can be more difficult than the actual sounds is the cadence and melody. Modern American is much flatter than my natural voice. I found that quite a challenge on Lady Bird. Greta kept having to say, 'Make it a bit flatter!' And I'd think I sounded like a robot."

Saoirse was young when she first entered Hollywood, but gradually, she discovered the ways in which she was treated differently from male actors, both on set and on the red carpet. "It may have taken me a while to see how dynamics on set weren't fair," she told The New York Times during a January 2018 interview. "But I've always known, from the age of 12, that I was being asked different questions by interviewers than men: 'Who's your celebrity crush?' 'Are you putting on all the dresses?' All about image and crushes. That always infuriated me."

Saoirse takes great pains to avoid social media and reviews, and she doesn't really care to know what the public thinks about her as an actor or a person. "I don't expose myself to them," she told The Guardian. "There will be something that sticks in my head, because it's not a natural, normal thing for people you don't know personally to write about you," later adding, " . . . reviews, they're not written for me."

Despite her young age, Saoirse isn't terribly concerned about her public image, and she doesn't like watching her own movies or even looking at photos of herself. "I just get so anxious whenever I watch anything that I'm in," she confided to Vogue in July 2018. When asked what she meant by "anxiety," she continued, "I'm fine with the way I look now. But I wouldn't necessarily be looking at photographs of myself all day. I don't want to become too consumed by the image of myself."

Saoirse doesn't pick roles lightly, and for her, the best roles are ones that are fully fleshed-out characters, not just characters who fade into the background. "From a purely selfish point of view, I've always wanted to play characters who are well-rounded and interesting and smart, or who are intelligently written," she told Harper's Bazaar. "And because that's what I've always wanted to get out of it, the films end up reflecting that. They're the only roles I want to play."

That doesn't mean she always has to play a starring role to be interested — she simply isn't interested in playing a character who's defined by their relationship to another character. "Even when I was a kid, I knew I didn't just want to play 'the sister,' or 'the girlfriend,' or 'the secretary,'" she continued. "That was always a priority for me, to play someone who — even if they were only in a few scenes — really had something to them."

Though her natural desire is to keep everyone around her happy, years in the industry have taught Saoirse that, at the end of the day, being happy with her own work is sometimes more important than keeping everyone else satisfied. "Every time I act, I worry: Can I do it again? And every time I finish a job, I feel like, 'Oh God, I got away with that one,'" she told The New York Times. "Plus, I'm a people-pleaser. I don't like upsetting anyone. But I've gotten to a point in my work where I need to stand firmly with decisions I've made or feel free to go in another direction — even if everyone around me is telling me to do the opposite. It's hard."

Actor isn't the only role Saoirse could see herself taking on in Hollywood. She has great admiration for directors, and she'd love the chance to try her own hand at directing one day. "I've always wanted to do it," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I was more drawn to that as a kid than I was to acting. I love working with actors, but I always learn the most from the directors. It's their vision you're bringing to life, you have to adapt to their way of working. I like having to stretch myself to fit in with their requirements."

At one point, Saorise worried that, if she wasn't working, she would no longer be recognised. However, she doesn't worry about obscurity anymore, and she even thinks that taking time off between projects is a good idea. "I'll always have that mentality of 'no one knows who I am' — and I like that," she confided to The Guardian. When asked about the fear of being forgotten if she left Hollywood for too long, she replied, "I've definitely felt that in the past. But then I watched an interview with Kate Bush after she went away. No one forgets about Kate Bush. She does her thing, and then she disappears. Adele does it, too, and Daniel Day-Lewis. It's clever, I think, and healthy."