IRISH actor Saoirse Ronan has revealed that her competitive nature has been around since she was a young girl growing up in Co. Wicklow.
The Hollywood star, who recently won a Best Actress gong at the Golden Globes for her role in Lady Bird, is nominated in the same category at the Baftas and the Oscars for the part.
In an interview with AnOther magazine, released this week, she reveals that competition is nothing new to her, as she always fought for the most lines in her school plays and opted to play on the boys Gaelic football team at school.
“From being a kid I’ve always been, ‘Well if a boy can do it I can do it’," she explained.
"When I was a kid, I’d play Gaelic football on the boys’ team. I was like, ‘I can do it if they can!’
"I’m definitely the type of person that likes to have a goal. If I’m in the gym, I like to know how many reps I have to do, and unless I’m about to die, I’ll get there!”
Regarding her early forays into the acting world, she added: “I went to a tiny country school, 50 kids in the whole school.
"There were so few children that everyone got a part — sometimes kids got two parts because there were more parts than pupils.
"The play was the highlight of the year for me, I loved it. I used to get the script, highlight my lines and count all of them to check I was in the top five — ‘OK, I’ve got 40 lines, that’s pretty good going’.”
The 24-year-old's role in Greta Gerwig’s coming of age film Lady Bird has seen her receive her third Oscar nomination, having previously been nominated as Best Actress for Brooklyn and Best Supporting Actress for Atonement in 2008.
Ronan joins Sally Hawkins, Frances McDormand, Margot Robbie, Saoirse Ronan, and Meryl Streep in the Best Actress category.
The Greystones, Co Wicklow native receives the nod for her portrayal of an angst-ridden Californian student in the critically acclaimed film.
Ronan got her acting breakthrough at the age of 13, with a part in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, in which she starred opposite Keira Knightley.
