The rise and rise of 13-year-old Carlow actress Saoirse Ronan continues with her casting in the pivotal role of The Lovely Bones, the new movie from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.

She will play Susie Salmon, a girl who is murdered but continues to observe her family - and her killer - on earth. Based on Alice Sebold's best- selling novel, The Lovely Bones begins shooting in October and co-stars Rachel Weisz and Ryan Gosling.

Having started out in the RTÉ series The Clinic when she was nine, Saoirse made her film debut in I Could Never Be Your Woman, a US romantic comedy with Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd. She also co-stars with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley in Joe Wright's film of the Ian McEwan novel Atonement (pictured), which opens the Venice Film Festival next month.

The daughter of Irish actor Paul Ronan, Saoirse has two more movies on the way. She joins Guy Pearce (as escapologist Harry Houdini) and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Death Defying Acts, and Joely Richardson and Tom Berenger in The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. She is now working with Bill Murray on the science-fiction adventure City of Ember, which is shooting in Northern Ireland.