US Edition 
Saoirse Ronan - who is the Oscars outsider with hopes to win at the Academy Awards?
She's an outsider for this year's Best Picture Oscar, for her performance in Brooklyn
Saoirse Ronan's Oscars hopes rest on her role as a young woman forced to move from 1950s rural Ireland to New York, in Nick Hornby’s adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s coming-of-age novel. It's an outsider for this year's Best Picture Oscar, but it did pick up the Outstanding British Film award at the Baftas.
Saoirse Ronan gives easily the most mature performance of her career as a young Irish woman persuaded to move to New York, and forced to choose between paramours on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
She flew the flag for Ireland on the red carpet at the Academy awards in a glittering red frock.
The young actress has previously been nominated for her role in Atonement.
Ronan revealed the secret to surviving the Oscars - eat a lot beforehand.
"Eat beforehand because you won't get fed for another six hours, so I ate a lot of food before I got here," the 21-year-old star told Sky on the red carpet.
The star spoke about being honoured to be named alongside her fellow nominees, "When you've got people like Cate [Blanchett, Carol] and Charlotte [Rampling, 45 Years] who have been in the game for such a long time and have such a great body of work. To be put in a category with them for anything is wonderful."
She was wearing a beautiful emerald green custom Calvin Klein dress with a plunging neckline and velvet straps.
The piece is heavily sequined on top, with spiral patterns created in the almost sheer skirt.
Born in The Bronx in New York City, the actress is the only child of Irish parents Monica and Paul. Ronan moved to County Carlow, Ireland, when she was three years old, before moving to County Dublin as a teen. This year Ireland received a record number of nominations for the Oscars.
We interviewed her after the film came out - and she admitted she had not watched it.
"I’ve never worked as hard as that, and I definitely needed a bit of emotional support because it’s too close to home," she said.
"For people to respond to it as well as they have – I have to say it’s a dream." She has not seen the film, she admitted "I can’t. Just talking about it, you can see I’m a basket case. In a couple of years, or when I have kids or something, we’ll all sit and watch it together."
She was 11 when she made her first film, I Could Never Be Your Woman, in which she played Michelle Pfeiffer’s daughter with an impeccable American accent.
She worked with a dialect coach, who later mentioned her to Atonement director Joe Wright, leading her to play Briony Tallis, an imaginative 13-year-old whose incomplete understanding of events one summer’s day destroys lives.