Saoirse Ronan Says She Was Often Pitted Against Dakota Fanning for Roles: 'There's Space for All of Us Now'

The four-time Oscar nominee recalled being forced to compete with Dakota Fanning early in her career

Saoirse Ronan says she was often pitted against other actresses in Hollywood when she was an up-and-coming star.

“For a while, it was me and Dakota Fanning,” the four-time Oscar nominee, 30, told ELLE for the magazine’s Women in Hollywood issue.

“And I would love for Dakota and I to work together. She’s one of the reasons why I got into acting in the first place, because when I was really young, she was working from such an early age, and I used to watch her stuff,” continued the Irish actress.

Ronan was 13 when she broke out in the 2007 movie Atonement, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. The Perfect Couple star Fanning, who is also 30, began her career as a child actress and starred in films like 2003’s Uptown Girls with Brittany Murphy and 2005’s War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise.

“To feel like, oh, there’s space for all of us now, where there’s still healthy competition, I think it’s great,” continued Ronan.

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Ronan is generating more Oscar buzz for her two new movies: Blitz and The Outrun.

The World War II drama Blitz, from director Steve McQueen, features Ronan as a single mother in London who is separated from her son George (Elliott Heffernan) when she sends him away to safety in the countryside as the Germans attack.

In The Outrun — which she produced with her husband, Slow Horses star Jack Lowden, 34 — she plays a recovering alcoholic who returns home to her small Scotland farm where she grew up after living life on the edge in London.

The Little Women star told ELLE she was excited to play someone who isn’t “likable.”

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“Because I got to shape it creatively, I just gave less of a f--- about things being palatable. I really responded to Lena Dunham’s characters in Girls, who are arseholes sometimes, but we’ve all got the capability for that,” she said.

“I just started watching Hacks” — the HBO comedy starring Jean Smart as a blunt comedian and Hannah Einbinder as her scheming joke writer — “and I’m like, ‘These girls are selfish. They’re self-involved. They’ve got massive egos, but they always have redeeming qualities,’ ” she continued.

“We’ve gotten into this habit of filtering our personalities so much, reducing them to a line on Instagram or Twitter. And to be able to have the opportunity to go, ‘Look, this person can be fully formed and have s---ty qualities and also redeeming ones, and let’s honor all of that’ — I’m at the point in my life where I’m like, ‘That’s what I want to see onscreen,’ ” said Ronan.

Fanning's younger sister Elle, 26, is also an actress. Dakota told E! News in May they "were never competitive growing up" when it came to trying out for roles.

"We have really different personalities too, so I think that's also helpful. We like different things," added Fanning, who this year earned her first Emmy nomination, for the series Ripley.