Saoirse Ronan missed out on ‘goofy teenage life’

Saoirse Ronan has some regrets about missing out on normal teenage life thanks to her successful career as an actress.

Over the last 15 years, the Irish American actress has been building an award-winning career, which has seen her nominated for an Oscar three times.

However, the Brooklyn star admitted in an interview with Grazia magazine she looks back on those years with some sadness.

“I feel like I missed out on a fun, typical, goofy teenage life,” she sighed to the British publication. “I really wanted to go to NYU (New York University) for a long time. And then I realised it was mainly because I wanted that social aspect.”

As well as landing her another chance at an Academy Award, Saoirse shared that working with actress-turned-director Greta Gerwig on Lady Bird, in which she stars as a teenager desperate to leave home, helped her come to terms with the “lack”.

“I was away so much so I wasn’t part of that structure,” she explained. “But 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 memorising it to pass an exam, you’re doing it because you actually have an interest in it.

“Once you accept that, it’s the most incredible thing, because it’s something that you hold with you forever.”

The pair enjoyed lengthy conversations about feminism, and Saoirse credits those chats with deepening her understanding of the subject, especially in light of the Time’s Up movement.

“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**k, we really need to make a change’. Now more than ever feminism is at the core of my life.”