This week’s Woman to Watch For is 23 year-old actress Saoirse Ronan. She is most recently known for her starring role as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson in Greta Gerwig’s

Lady Bird

. Ronan received an immense amount of critical acclaim for this role, including the Golden Globe award for Best Actress and an Academy award nomination. Moreover, A. O. Scott of

The New York Times

wrote: “Ronan navigates each swerve in Lady Bird’s story with an uncanny combination of self-confidence and discovery. She is as spontaneous and unpredictable as an actual 17-year- old […] which suggests an altogether stupefying level of craft.”

Ronan’s on screen debut was in the Irish television drama,

The Clinic

, in 2003, when she was just 8 years old. While she started in television, the bulk of Ronan’s career has been in lm. She has appeared in 22 movies from 2007- 2017. Highlights include her lead role as Eilis Lacey, a young Irish immigrant in the 1950s in the 2016 lm

Brooklyn,

and her supporting role as 13 year-old Briony Tallis in the 2008 lm

Atonement.

Ronan earned Academy Award nominations for both of these roles.

On Dec. 2. 2017, Ronan hosted

Saturday Night Live

. Ronan was an excellent host as she is effortlessly funny. In her monologue, Ronan performed a song about how to pronounce her first name (rhymes with inertia!).

She also had a brief career as a stage actress, making her Broadway debut as the lead role of Abigail Williams in the 2016 revival of Arthur Miller’s

The Crucible

. Ronan’s performance was memorable and acclaimed.

In addition to her robust career, Ronan is known for her charming wit, adorably awkward personality, and her lovable thick Irish accent. During a recent interview with Ellen Degeneres, Ronan played Ellen’s game of “Who’d You Rather?” She had to pick between two pictures of celebrities that kept changing, and decide who she would rather date. Admitting she doesn’t have much experience dating, Ronan took the game perhaps a bit too seriously. At one point she had to choose between Timothée Chalamet and Harry Styles. “Let me stick with Timmy because, you know, even if it’s just a platonic relationship, I think we can have a nice companionship together […] and Harry’s on the road a lot,” she said. It’s moments like these that are making America fall in love with Saoirse Ronan.

Ronan, an only child, was born in the Bronx, New York City, but her family moved to Dublin, Ireland when she was three years old. She currently lives in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland and is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States. She is also a philanthropist as she is an active ambassador of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Ronan is clearly a woman to watch out for, and the press seems to agree. In 2016, she was featured in Forbes’s “30 Under 30” list and in

Time’s

“Next Generation Leaders” list. Ronan’s next two films,

Mary Queen of Scots

and a lm adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play

The Seagull

will premier in late 2018. Keep an eye out for Ronan as she continues to take the entertainment world by storm!