Saoirse Ronan reveals lookalike Hollywood actress she was pitted against for roles

Saoirse Ronan has revealed the star lookalike she faced for roles when she came up in Hollywood.

The 30-year-old shot to fame when she was 13, earning an Oscar nomination for her role in Atonement alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

But in the early years of her success, Saoirse found herself competing with another blonde actress her age.

The child star in question is just two months older than Saoirse and has also been showered with praise for her underage performances.

The other actress reportedly auditioned for The Lovely Bones, which ended up being one of Saoirse’s first big films in the wake of Atonement, via IMDb.

Now Saoirse has shared that she would ‘love’ to act alongside her former rival, in a new interview for the Elle Women In Hollywood Issue.

“For a while it was me and Dakota Fanning. And I would love it if Dakota and I worked together,” Saoirse told the magazine.

Dakota was just seven when she became a household name playing the daughter of Sean Penn’s mentally disabled character in the 2001 drama I Am Sam.

I Am Sam made her the youngest nominee in the history of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, securing her position as one of Hollywood’s first child stars.

Saoirse has now praised Dakota as “one of the reasons why I got into acting in the first place, because when I was really young, she was working from such a young age, and I was always watching her stuff.”

She added, “So to feel like, ‘Oh, there’s room for all of us now,’ where there’s still healthy competition, I think is great.”

In the 2007 film Atonement, adapted from a novel by Ian McEwan, Saoirse played a teenage girl named Briony, who makes a false accusation that destroys a man’s life.

She catapulted to international fame in the picture, earning an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress, but losing to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton.

Amid her early fame, Susie landed the coveted role of Susie Salmon in Peter Jackson’s 2009 film The Lovely Bones.

Saoirse (left), pictured last month, said she was in the running for roles against Dakota Fanning (right), pictured in September

The other actress reportedly auditioned for The Lovely Bones, which ended up being one of Saoirse’s first major films in the wake of Atonement; Saoirse is depicted in the film

The 30-year-old shot to fame at the age of 13, earning an Oscar nomination for her role in Atonement alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy; Saoirse depicted in the film

Dakota (right) was just seven when she became a household name playing the daughter of Sean Penn’s mentally disabled character (left) in the 2001 drama I Am Sam

The film, based on Alice Sebold’s novel of the same name, starred Saoirse as a teenager watching her family from the afterlife after being raped and murdered.

Dakota reportedly auditioned to lead the cast of The Lovely Bones, which was ultimately both a critical and commercial failure – although Saoirse was widely praised for her performance.

The year The Lovely Bones was released, Dakota appeared in the title role of the stop-motion animated film Coraline.

Adapted from a beloved children’s book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline – unlike The Lovely Bones – was both a box office hit and a critical darling.

Saoirse has had an acclaimed adult career, earning three more Oscar nominations for the 2015 film Brooklyn, the 2017 film Lady Bird and the 2019 film Little Women.

She was showered with praise this year for her performance as an alcoholic in The Outrun, a film she also helped produce.

Meanwhile, Dakota received an Emmy nomination this year for Ripley, the Netflix miniseries based on the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley from 1955 by Patricia Highsmith.