Saoirse Ronan, the 25-year-old actor, earned her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role, playing Director Greta Gerwig’s Jo March in “Little Women” (2019). She is the youngest four-time nominee in history, second to Jennifer Lawrence who was only four months younger when she received her fourth nomination for “Joy.”
The adapted film, “Little Women,” was breathed to life by Gerwig – director of the Golden Globe’s Best Film in 2018, “Lady Bird,” as well — who led Ronan to nominations in both features. The film unties the suffocating binds that women were prescribed in nineteenth-century life through the actress’s steadfast physicality. It examines what it meant to be a refined woman in society, a true artist and what it was like when the concept of marriage was essentially viewed as an economic proposal.
Greatly drawing upon the book “Little Women” and its author, Louisa May Alcott, Ronan playfully and pointedly portrays Jo’s strong-headedness and artistic ambition whilst she begrudgingly comes into womanhood. The roots of Jo’s character stayed true to Alcott, even quoting the writer in one scene. In an 1861 journal, she wrote marriage is “very sweet and pretty, but I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.”
Ronan’s questioning of virtuosity and reason to follow a predetermined path were main threads in “Lady Bird” as well. The film is set in an unromantic Sacramento and follows free-spirited Lady Bird, a Catholic high school classmate not to be reckoned with. Ronan, in all her tousled troubles of teenage girlhood, seemed not to be acting but flawlessly exhibiting what it is to be a girl ‘coming of age’ untethered from stereotypes or hollow drama.
Beyond headstrong Jo March and Lady Bird, Ronan has played fierce lead female roles since she was 12, such as writer-aspiring Briony Tallis in “Atonement,” which landed her first Oscar nomination, at age 13, for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. Writer of the film, Ian McEwan, called her 2007 performance “remarkable”: “She gives us thought processes right on-screen, even before she speaks, and conveys so much with her eyes.”
Beyond what The Academy has honored, the actor has shared the ruthlessly fierce life of Mary, Queen of Scots, vying for her country and religion in “Mary Queen of Scots,” she waded through the waters of consummation of marriage after a life of sexual abuse in the 1962 period piece “On Chesil Beach.” She even played a New York hitwoman in “Violet & Daisy,” where she was disguised as a righteous pizza delivery nun, asking essential questions of friendship amidst a paid assassination job.
Ronan has already taken home a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role as Jo March and has now left a mark in Oscar history, no matter who takes home the award next month. The nominations for the 92nd annual Academy Awards were announced Jan. 13 and are set to take place Feb. 9 at the Dolby Theatre, airing on ABC.
