IRISH ACTRESS Saoirse Ronan has been nominated in the Leading Actress category in the British Academy Film Awards (Baftas).
The teenager got the Bafta nod for her role in The Lovely Bones, which is based on Alice Sebold's best-selling novel.
She will compete with Gabourey Sidibe for Precious, Audrey Tautou for Coco Before Chanel, Julie and Juliastar Meryl Streep, who bagged a Best Actress Golden Globe earlier this week, and Carey Mulligan for An Education, based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber.
Blockbuster sci-fi spectacle Avatar, An Education, and Iraq war drama The Hurt Lockerlead this year's film Bafta nominations with eight nominations apiece.
Fifteen-year-old Ronan, an only child, was born in 1994 in New York City, where she lived until aged three.
Her parents, Monica and Paul, emigrated to the US during the 1980s, but after 13 years they moved back to the small village of Ardattin, Co Carlow.
She made her name in the film Atonement, where she played the part of an intense and unlikable child who meddles in her sister's love affair, with disastrous results.