Saoirse Ronan: My mother didn’t want me to win an Oscar when I was 13

The Irish actress has been nominated again in 2016 for 'Brooklyn' and will soon be on Broadway with Arthur Miller’s 'The Crucible'

The 21-year-old said her father's acting career demonstrated how awards are more deserved after years of hard work (Rex Features)

Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan said her mum did not want her to win the award when she was 13 years old because she was “too young” and she did not expect to win.

The twice-nominated Oscar actress told Time Out New York that her mother’s reasoning was also due to her father Paul Ronan, who is also an actor and who had spent a long time building up his career.

“After you’ve put in years of hard work, the award or the nomination represents something much greater,” she said.

Ms Ronan, nominated this year for her leading role in “Brooklyn", said when she was 13 she did not expect to win the award and was glad for the ceremony to be over.

“To be honest, by the time they got to my category, I was starving. […] You don’t get fed when you go to the Oscars.”

“That’s what we were thinking about more than anything: All right, grand, Tilda [Swinton]’s up there getting the award. Can we go and get a burger and chips now?”

The 21-year-old will be on Broadway for the first time from March, playing the character of Abigail in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, the story of the Salem witch trials in the 17th century.

The adaptation is directed by Ivo Van Hove, who directed David Bowie’s last musical “Lazarus" and also a recent production of Arthur Miller’s ”A View from the Bridge”.

"Ivo likes silence. He likes things to be quiet. And he's not into a lot of shouting or volume or any of that kind of stuff," she said.

She is also set to star in her second Ian McEwan adaptation “On Chesil Beach”, set in 1960s England, which tells the tale of a young couple becoming increasingly tense before they consummate their marriage.

Ms Ronan played the character of Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan's “Atonement“ in 2007.