Watch Saoirse Ronan’s Women in Hollywood speech from ELLE’s 2024 event in Los Angeles.
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00:00Well firstly I want to thank Kerry, she's over there, for giving me this award.
00:06There aren't many that I admire and I respect as much as I do you. From the moment I saw you in
00:13that carriage in Pride and Prejudice giggling away next to one of your fellow Bennett sisters,
00:20to seeing you totally and utterly shine while also expertly making a spaghetti bolognese live on
00:26stage in Skylight, to breaking my heart into a thousand pieces in the most masterful performance
00:34I have seen you give to date in Maestro, please give her a round of applause.
00:45You have had me in the palm of your hand Kerry. This is not an exaggeration to say that I was
00:52changed after seeing your performance in Maestro. I don't know where that came from but it and you,
01:02the level of skill, emotional clarity and precision that you exercised in that film
01:09was nothing short of perfection. Your performance and that movie made me so so proud to be an actor.
01:18I was so inspired to see a performer of my generation who clearly holds the craft in such
01:24high regard while also still making the work feel effortless, relatable, never affected, just true.
01:33I attempted to say all of this to Kerry in a very embarrassing, very blubbery voice note after I had
01:40left cinema that day when I saw Maestro and so I'm glad that I get another shot at it today.
01:47I'm still waiting on the project to come along that means that we can actually work together
01:52because I know by working with you, yes I know by working with you, you will only make me a better
01:58actor and there is still so much that I want to learn from you. You are a rare diamond mulligan.
02:06You are old school in the best possible way. I admire how you work and more importantly how
02:13you live your life and the greatest honour for me today is being up on stage with you so thank you
02:20so much. I also want to thank the incredible Nina Garcia. I don't know where she is. There she is,
02:32gorgeous. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. I'm so grateful to share tonight with
02:39some really incredible people, some of whom I've gotten the chance to spend some time with
02:44over the past few days and I've genuinely loved every minute of it. Julianne, she's there. It's
02:51weird because I'm talking to you but I'm not really but to Julianne, to Zoe, to Tilda, Selina,
03:00Danielle, Carla, Demi, Cynthia and Mikey, thank you so much for your brilliant work
03:07and for your brilliant brains. I wouldn't really class myself as a woman in Hollywood per se,
03:15however this is a place that I pass through every once in a while and I have done from the age of
03:20about 13, only a few years before meeting Miss Mulligan for the first time and it's usually to
03:27discuss the films that I've made elsewhere. So I've actually sat in this very hotel
03:33and I have spoken, as all the women have for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours
03:40in a dark room with no air, about an experience I'll have had on a job. Am I right? A year or two
03:50before. I'll speak about an experience that has almost always been magical and life-altering and
04:00simply the most fun you could ever have anywhere and the ones who make it so are usually the ones
04:07that journalists or the public don't know. I'll sit under the lights while they ask me for an
04:13anecdote, I'll take a sip of tea and I'll provide them with a rapid sort of concise answer for
04:20their piece, a beginning, a middle and an end that could only ever exist in a six-minute interview
04:26but could never capture, at least for me, what it all really meant. But in my mind I'm transported
04:36far away from here to a costume or hair and makeup truck on the Orkney Islands, for example, with my
04:43friends Grace Snell and Kat Morgan, our costume and hair and makeup designer on the outrun,
04:49collaborating together into the wee hours to establish a hero look for Rona during a pre-shoot
04:56back in 2022, five months before the shoot officially begins with no time, no money on our
05:02side, just blind faith, ability and the love of the work. Or I'm in Shropshire or I'm in the Sahara
05:10Desert or I'm in Concord, Massachusetts or I'm in Lyme Regis in Dorset with the almighty, always
05:17brilliant Jacqueline Duren and Ivana Primeratz helping me learn about the art of storytelling,
05:23transformation through creation and healthy leadership. Healthy leadership.
05:31Two women who have taught me from the tender age of 12 years old all the way through my 20s and I
05:37hope throughout the rest of my life how to question, how to think and how to build a character
05:43from the outside in. I'm then in a casting room on Portobello Road in London with the casting
05:49director Fiona Weir. I'm feeling encouraged and being made to feel confident to do my best in an
05:56audition or I'm learning how to read people and find what makes them unique so that you can make
06:02your team as interesting and rich as it can be to tell the story that you want to tell.
06:08I'm 14 years old in a car at 5am on the South Island in New Zealand with Brenna Townsend
06:14playing games to keep me awake and feeling light before the heavy material that I'll engage with
06:20that day on The Lovely Bones that has been written and later will be rewritten and probably will be
06:26rewritten again by Fran Walsh and Philip O'Boyans on the top of a mountain while our first AD
06:32Caro Cunningham commands her set with confidence and determination and keeps things moving forward.
06:40I have cried on my lunch break in Mourna Ferguson's hair and makeup truck on Brooklyn
06:46convinced with every fibre of my being that I am just not up to the job and that being given the
06:53biggest hug by her and the rest of the girls in that truck gives me enough self-belief even if
06:59it's only pretend to step out onto set and keep going. Always looking to her, to Mourna in those
07:06moments of hopelessness and always being guided by her calm that you only get when you've been
07:12doing something for a very long time. Claire Williams, Charlie Rogers, Naomi Dawn, Sally James,
07:20Mara Comitini, Lorraine Glynn, Sivlean Roddy and countless other designers, standbys, stand-ins,
07:28writers, runners, script supervisors and I hope one day many more cinematographers,
07:35camera ACs, boom ops, gaffers, riggers, drivers, location managers and I hope to God directors.
07:47These are the women that I have grown up around. They have helped shape me into the actor that I
07:55am. They have shaped me into the woman that I am today and I am so proud of who that woman is.
08:03A few of you will recognize some of the names that I've mentioned but most of you won't and yet
08:10without them we wouldn't be here and this is not my attempt to appear foe-gracious or inclusive,
08:17this is just the truth. The world of filmmaking stretches far beyond the boundaries of Hollywood
08:24and these are the women who have built it so thank you to them.