Saoirse RONAN

The Irish actress became an unlikely American everygirl. But at 30, she's ready to paint with a darker palette.

SAOIRSE RONAN HAS MADE A CAREER of being approachable. Whether she’s playing spunky Jo March in Little Women or the sullen, Manic Panic-ed titular role in Lady Bird, her appeal has always been rooted in her everygirlness. And yes, perched next to me in the booth at a Lower East Side restaurant, she is indeed appealingly regular, from her jeans and T-shirt down to the hair tie encircling her wrist.

But two unexpected new parts, both of which are generating awards buzz, may soon upend that perception. In Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, which Ronan coproduced, she gives a raw portrayal of a woman struggling to get sober. Her husband, the actor Jack Lowden (who’s also a coproducer), read the memoir the film is based on and suggested it could be an onscreen vehicle for Ronan. The role was personal, she says, because loved ones of hers have shared that struggle. She has come to see addiction as an illness, as opposed to a character flaw. “Especially if you’re young, it’s very hard not to see it in that way,” she says. “Because if you don’t suffer from your brain essentially being altered by a substance, then you don’t understand why they can’t just choose not to live this life. You don’t understand why they don’t want to, or don’t feel like it’s worth choosing you over it. There’s a lot of confusion that’s born out of it, and resentment, which is what I had, and I still have to a certain extent.” Despite her initial hesitation, she says, “the logical part of me knew that by stepping into the psychology of someone going through it, I could take some of the sting out of it for myself. It really was a way for me to heal from my own wounds.”