Too much too young?

Published on Tuesday 22 January 2008 21:02

Among this year's Oscar nominees is Saoirse Ronan, the 13-year-old co-star of Atonement. What does it mean for her, asks FIONA MACGREGOR, and is such early acclaim an advantage or a double-edged sword?

Scotsman writers look at past nominees of tender years to see how they have fared.

SHE has yet to attain Keira Knightley's swan-like beauty or James McAvoy's soulful sexiness, but 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan's portrayal of a stonily self-righteous schoolgirl in Atonement has made her the only star of the highly acclaimed film to have gained an Oscar nomination.

The nominations, which were announced last night, mean the Irish teenager is now in the running for the Best Supporting Actress award, an achievement which would see her become one of just handful of very young people to win one of Hollywood's top accolades.

As Briony Tallis – the calculating and isolated child whose failure to grasp the complexity of adult relationships leads to ruin in the film – Ronan's performance was at times as disturbing as it was mesmerising.

"This is what I try to do with everything… just be the person," is Ronan's way of describing how she acts. "Be the person I'm playing. That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else."

Ronan will become more familiar to cinemagoers over the coming year. Next month will see her playing Michelle Pfeiffer's daughter in I Could Never Be Your Woman, while later in the year she will star opposite Bill Murray in City of Ember, play Catherine Zeta-Jones's daughter in Death Defying Acts and, perhaps most challenging of all, take on the role of 14-year-old Susie Salmon (who was murdered by a paedophile) in Peter Jackson's upcoming screen version of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

Not a bad cache of achievements at a time when there are more than a few talented 13-year-old actresses competing for work, including 2007 Oscar-winner Abigail Breslin and Dakota Fanning. But of course the road to Hollywood stardom is littered with the tragic remnants of once-talented actors who dazzled in Tinseltown as children but lived (if not always for very long) to regret it.

In Ronan's case, those who have worked with her seem united in their opinion that, as her co-star McAvoy put it: "She's got her head screwed on; she's incredibly talented."

Atonement director Joe Wright has also been praised the young actress to the heavens: "There's no mopping up to do with her emotionally after each scene. She's doing a scene where she's crying or scared or intimidated… When it was over, we'd be left in that state, and she'd be up and asking where the tea and biscuits were."

In a world where child stars have been known to have drink and drug problems before they reached their teens, Ronan's enthusiasm for tea and biscuits is indeed refreshing – but she's got a long way to go yet.

MARY BADHAM SCOUT IN TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, 1962

&#149 AGE: 10

IN A triumphant adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, based on the author's memories of childhood and racial tension in America's Deep South, ten-year-old Badham delivered a wholly convincing portrayal of Jean-Louise 'Scout' Finch, the tomboyish daughter of Atticus (Gregory Peck).

Alabama-born Badham came to the role with no acting experience. Her connection to film was through her older brother, the director John Badham, who later made his name with Saturday Night Fever.

Badham struggled at first and made a particular hash of a breakfast-table scene. Co-star Philip Alford, playing brother Jem, grew impatient and later took his revenge. In a scene where he had to roll Badham along in a tyre, he deliberately pushed it too hard, and it collided with an equipment truck.

The Oscar that year went to another child actor, Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Badham appeared in two more films, This Property is Condemned and Let's Kill Uncle (both 1966). She then retired from acting.

&#149 WHERE IS SHE NOW?

An art restorer, Badham still undertakes lecture tours, talking about To Kill a Mockingbird and its message of tolerance.

In 2005 she was persuaded to play a special cameo role in an independent film, Our Very Own, by its writer-director Cameron Watson.

She remained good friends with Gregory Peck – to whom she was always 'Scout' – until his death in 2003.

HALEY JOEL OSMENT COLE SEAR IN THE SIXTH SENSE

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, 1999

&#149 AGE: 11

"I SEE dead people" was the line that helped Haley Joel Osment on his way to an Oscar nomination for his role as the damaged and tormented child in The Sixth Sense, in which he co-starred with Bruce Willis. Born in Los Angeles in 1988, Osment played his first role at the age of four, in a Pizza Hut ad, and was spotted by director Robert Zemeckis, who gave him a part in Forrest Gump. Bypassed for the role of young Luke Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, his fortunes soared when The Sixth Sense made him the eighth-youngest ever Oscar nominee.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? He went on to star with Jude Law in Stephen Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, then landed a second Spielberg science-fiction flick, Minority Report.

&#149 WHERE IS HE NOW? Though reportedly handling fame with maturity, following a car cash in California in 2006 his blood-alcohol content was found to be twice the legal limit. He was fined and sentenced to three years' probation and 60 hours in an alcohol rehabilitation programme. In recent years Osment has voiced Sora, the main character in Disney's Kingdom Hearts video game series. His next film role is that of a school journalist in Home of the Giants.

JACK WILD THE ARTFUL DODGER IN OLIVER!

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, 1969

&#149 AGE: 16

WILD'S irrepressible swagger and his rendition of the catchy Consider Yourself in Lionel Bart's screen musical version of Oliver Twist won him an Academy Award nomination and made him a household name. Born outside Manchester in 1952, his family moved to London when he was eight. A few years later, a stage school agent "discovered" him playing football in a park. He appeared in Ken Loach's debut feature, Poor Cow then, in 1967, auditioned for the role of the Artful Dodger.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Following Oliver! he became a linchpin of the popular US children's programme HR Pufnstuf, and also signed a recording contract. The 1970s saw him appearing in innumerable TV specials. Subsequent screen work saw a reunion with his old Oliver! co-star Ron Moody in Flight of the Doves, but most of his work was in theatre. His career was blighted by excessive drinking, though he managed to sober up enough to join Kevin Costner in the 1991 hit movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

&#149 WHERE IS HE NOW?

In 2000 Wild was diagnosed with oral cancer, linked to his alcohol and drug abuse, and he died in Tebworth, Bedfordshire, in 2006.

TATUM O'NEAL ADDIE IN PAPER MOON

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, 1973

&#149 AGE: 10

THE youngest actor ever to win an Oscar, O'Neal was praised for her entertaining and surprisingly mature role as a child con-artist being tutored by her con-man father. She was born into a Hollywood acting family, the daughter of actor Ryan O'Neal – who played her father in Paper Moon – and the actress Joanna Cook Moore.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

After several successful roles in teen movies, O'Neal's career as an adult actor took a downward turn in the 1980s, as did her private life. In her autobiography, A Paper Life, she alleged that she had been molested by a male family friend and endured physical and emotional abuse from her father, with whom she lived following her parents' divorce. She later alleged that she had been taken to an opium-fuelled orgy by Melanie Griffith when she was just 12. She battled a heroin addiction and lost custody of her three children to her ex-husband, John McEnroe, in 1998.

&#149 WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Now 44, O'Neal has had some film and television work over the past decade, and is to star in a film called Saving Grace, due to be released later this year.

JUDY GARLAND

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: AN ACADEMY JUVENILE AWARD FOR HER PERFORMANCES IN 1939, INCLUDING THE WIZARD OF OZ AND BABES IN ARMS

&#149 AGE: 18

BORN Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922, she entered Vaudeville at the age of two and a half, when she took to the stage with her two older sisters, who later became the Garland Sisters.

She changed her name to Judy after a popular Hoagy Carmichael song. Not long into her teens, she signed to MGM, with whom she made more than two dozen films, including the one that immortalised her – and her singing – The Wizard of Oz.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Despite the glittering career, the chronically insecure Garland battled personal demons all her life. The drugs she took to combat weight increase plunged her into addiction, four of her five marriages ended in divorce, and her financial affairs proved disastrous, with her frequently owing thousands of dollars in overdue taxes.

&#149 WHERE IS SHE NOW? Having attempted suicide on several occasions, she died of an accidental overdose in 1969, aged 47.

ANNA PAQUIN FLORA IN THE PIANO

&#149 NOMINATED FOR: BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN 1993

&#149 AGE: 11

PAQUIN'S breakthrough role made her the second-youngest Oscar-winner in history. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1982, she moved to her mother's native New Zealand when she was four. She and her sister both auditioned for The Piano, and she landed the part from among 5,000 applicants.

&#149 WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Her career has been impressive and apparently without the personal problems which afflict so many former child stars. She re-established her box-office credentials in X-Men in 2000, returning for sequels in 2003 and 2006. She has also taken on quirkier, independent roles in films such as The Squid and the Whale and Almost Famous.

&#149 WHERE IS SHE NOW?

In 2007 she was nominated for an Emmy in the American TV epic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.