The 16 year old actress appeared with director Joe Wright. Both had worked together before when he directed her in Atonement. After doing period pieces, Wright was interesting in directing Hanna, after Ronan suggested he take the job. "I thought that might be fun," Wright said, "and a kind of way to wash out the old eyeballs."

In the movie, we see Hanna being trained by her father (Eric Bana) in an isolated area for many years. He’s being hunted by the CIA, but allows her to be found by them so she can target a CIA official played by Cate Blanchett. It soon becomes a chase movie where both Hanna and her dad try to reunite in Berlin, with the CIA in hot pursuit. It’s portrayed as a fairy tale, with Hanna as the pure maid and Blanchett’s character as an Evil Stepmother which she defines in no uncertain terms. 

Wright says  he made the movie as more than a spy thriller. "You can go and enjoy the action thriller genre kind of thing," he said, "but if you want to get something deeper from it, the you perhaps can, be that kind of social issues, or genre issues or metaphysical issues." That starts to emerge when we learn Hanna was part of a secret project, which is why her file emphasizes her DNA structure. 

Talking to reporters later that day, he admits he doesn’t see Hanna as a feminist hero because he thinks that word’s meaning has been changed in recent years. He’s especially critical of movies that over-sexualize female action heroines. Hanna is just a young girl who survives through her abilities, not her looks.

As for Ronan, she thought that Hanna was pure because she hasn’t been influenced by the modern world. "What I had to do was just wipe my mind clean of anything that I every really gone through, especially in the past few years," she said, "my memory, really, and try and reawaken a fascination in sort of everything the world offers us, really." That is reflected when Hanna sees an airplane for the first time early in the film. Ronan called it a fantastic exercise.

As this picture shows, she is wearing a Wonder Woman top. When she was asked by reporters what other heroines she admires, she admits she doesn’t read a lot of comic books, but does admire the Bride from Kill Bill.

Then she was asked if she ever heard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a teen hero who is also very popular. Ronan says she’s heard of her but hasn’t seen the show,but "she seems like quite a kick-ass type of girl."

She also said she and Wright worked well as collaborators and how it showed in the movie. They talked more about the movie when they appeared after a special screening of Hanna at the Metreon.

Ronan is expected to be in the cast of  The Hobbit, and, of all things, The Brothers Grimm: Snow White as the title character.