Saoirse Ronan Will Take a Break From Period Dramas With The Outrun

After heading back to the mid-20th century with The French Dispatch, the mid-19th century with Ammonite and Little Women, and the 16th century with Mary Queen of Scots, Saoirse Ronan is stepping out of period dress. The four-time Oscar nominee will next star in The Outrun, which is based on the acclaimed 2015 memoir about alcoholism and nature by Amy Liptrot. The film will find Ronan as Rona, a Scot who’s fresh from a stint in rehab when she returns to the sheep farm where she grew up on the Orkney Islands for the first time in a decade. Once there, she “reconnects with the landscape” and pieces together her childhood memories, which “merge with the more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery.”

“It was Amy’s voice that first drew me to The Outrun,” Ronan said in a statement. “Her unusual way of seeing things in a way that perhaps you only can when you’ve been to the darkest place you can go within yourself. I have been waiting to play a part like this—the messiness, hopefulness, dreaminess, authenticity and humor we want to achieve—I’ve been scared of it, but with Nora I feel ready.” Ronan will also co-produce the film, which is directed by Nora Fingscheidt (most recently behind The Unforgivable starring Sandra Bullock).

Ronan has lately stuck to one film a year, most recently joining the ensemble cast in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. (Prior to that, she played Kate Winslet’s lover in Ammonite in 2020 and, of course, Jo March in 2019’s Little Women, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.) Now, the 27-year-old is ramping things up: The Outrun is one of three films she has in the works at the moment. She recently wrapped production on See How They Run, a Mark Chappell whodunit costarring Adrien Brody and Sam Rockwell, and has now moved on to the role of a farmer married to Paul Mescal in the upcoming Garth Davis film Foe. Per Liptrot, she will begin filming The Outrun later this year.