Saoirse Ronan: ‘Lady Bird is the only film of mine I can watch – I’m usually too anxious’

Saoirse Ronan has admitted that Lady Bird is the only film of hers that she enjoys watching as she usually gets “really anxious” about seeing herself on screen.

The Irish actress, 23, found that she related to the troubled teen when she watched her back, rather than when she was playing her in Greta Gerwig’s critically-acclaimed coming-of-age drama.

Ronan, who already has two nominations to her name, has just received another Best Actress Oscar nod for the role.

“I think when I watched her I related to her more, which was interesting,” she told the Standard.

“I think I was so right in the middle of all of it when it was being shot. It’s the only film I’ve been in that I can watch and actually enjoy.

“I’m usually really anxious watching anything that I’m in, I really don’t enjoy it but I don’t know why I was able to watch this and go ‘Oh Lady Bird is her own person’.”

Ronan shot to fame in 2007’s Atonement and went on to appear in critically-acclaimed roles in Brooklyn, Hanna and The Lovely Bones.

In Lady Bird, Ronan negotiates difficult first relationships with boys, her mother and her best friend as she completes her final year of high school.

“When I read the script I instantly thought, ‘Oh I get her – I totally understand that whole feeling and what’s that like,’” she said.

“But I didn’t really know instantly how to play her, so it was one of those ones that was a process and actually day-to-day and scene-to-scene I was actually figuring her out as I went along. I don’t know if that was a good thing I didn’t know what I was doing on day one or at all.”

She added: “Maybe it was good because from one scene to the next she’s shape-shifting and trying on different characters to see which one fits with different people. And it was kind of the same for me when I played her.”