Do we like them?

Do we like Saoirse Ronan?

Our score: 8 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and there is real good, but the record we could verify is thinner on causes than a 9 or 10 needs.

Ronan was born in the Bronx to Irish parents, and the family moved back to Ireland, to Carlow, while she was a toddler. She got into acting after watching her actor father work on sets. She made her screen debut at nine in RTÉ's The Clinic and picked up an Oscar nomination at 13 for Atonement.

On scandals, we came up empty. Searches for lawsuits, allegations and complaints turned up nothing about her, only other people's cases. That's an honest blank, not a cover-up, but it is also the limit of what we could check.

On the harm check she's clean. Her one big viral moment came on the Graham Norton Show in 2024, when Paul Mescal said he wouldn't reach for his phone in an attack and she answered that this is “what girls have to think about all the time”. She later said the reaction was wild and that women wrote to her sharing their own experiences. We found nothing from her on trans people, migrants or the climate either way.

On queer stories, she played a lesbian love story with Kate Winslet in Ammonite, and told Pride she wasn't comfortable with a queer relationship being about only one part of it. That reads as someone who thought about doing it properly rather than ticking a box.

The recent work is the Sam Mendes Beatles films, in which she plays Linda McCartney opposite Paul Mescal, from Sony and due in 2028. Nothing about that company or crew raises a red flag. We found no recent projects with people pushing harm.

The good stuff is modest but real. In 2020 she became the first ambassador of the Irish Film Institute, a role built around preserving and showing Irish film. She has also fronted campaigns for the ISPCC's Childline appeal and donated her Golden Globes dress to the Time's Up auction, though we only confirmed the film institute role by opening the page.