Deadline reports that Saoirse Ronan has been cast in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. Gerwig will direct from her own script, and it marks her solo directorial debut (in 2008, she co-directed the relationship drama Nights And Weekends with Joe Swanberg). Ronan is set to play Lady Bird’s protagonist, a high school senior spending her last year at home with her family in Gerwig’s hometown of Sacramento.
At just 22 years old, Ronan has already received many accolades: She’s got two Oscar nominations under her belt, first in 2007 for her role in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Atonement and this year for her work in Brooklyn, which is also nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Ronan also received Golden Globe, BAFTA, and SAG nominations for Brooklyn, so Gerwig has snagged a star who’s in high demand. Ronan, who is making her Broadway debut in The Crucible this spring, also just wrapped on an adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play The Seagull alongside House Of Cards’ Corey Stoll and Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss.
Gerwig wrote Frances Ha and Mistress America, in which she also starred; she also recently starred in Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, which hits theaters in May, and is a part of the ensemble cast for Todd Solondz’s Wiener-Dog, premiering at Sundance this year. Her How I Met Your Mother spinoff that never took off, though, so instead of raking in network syndication money, it looks like Gerwig is destined to keep making indie features about young women. But who’s complaining? She’s very good at it. Though the rest of the cast for Lady Bird has not been announced, it looks like Gerwig hasn’t written herself into this one and that she’ll be sticking to just writing and directing. Whatever the capacity, we’re sure she can handle it.