Saoirse doesn't pick roles lightly, and for her, the best roles are ones that are fully fleshed-out characters, not just characters who fade into the background. "From a purely selfish point of view, I've always wanted to play characters who are well-rounded and interesting and smart, or who are intelligently written," she told Harper's Bazaar. "And because that's what I've always wanted to get out of it, the films end up reflecting that. They're the only roles I want to play."
That doesn't mean she always has to play a starring role to be interested — she simply isn't interested in playing a character who's defined by their relationship to another character. "Even when I was a kid, I knew I didn't just want to play 'the sister,' or 'the girlfriend,' or 'the secretary,'" she continued. "That was always a priority for me, to play someone who — even if they were only in a few scenes — really had something to them."
