Kirsten Sheridan
Writer. Director. Executive Producer.
Kirsten Sheridan is an Oscar and Golden Globe nominated writer, a studio feature director, and an independent producer. She co-founded The Factory, Ireland’s premier filmmaking collective, and currently works in film and television in Los Angeles.
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory--what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our "flooding.”
Toni Morrison
Work
WRITER
As a teenager Kirsten won The Film Institute of Ireland/Guinness Outstanding Young Irish Talent Award and The Miramax Best Irish Screenplay Award. Kirsten’s first studio feature film as a writer garnered her an Academy Award nomination for the semi-autobiographical film In America, along with her father, director Jim Sheridan, and her sister, writer Naomi Sheridan.
DIRECTOR
Kirsten has directed several feature films, including the Warner Brothers modern fairytale August Rush. The film starred veteran actor and comedian Robin Williams, renowned actors Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Freddie Highmore, and Terrence Howard.
August Rush placed in the top ten at the American Box Office, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Original Soundtrack and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song.
MENTOR
Born into a family of filmmakers, Kirsten spent her childhood immersed in the theater world, spending all her free time backstage and in the lighting box at the Irish Arts Center in New York. At 12 years old, her first film experience was on set playing Daniel Day Lewis’s little sister in the Oscar-winning film My Left Foot.
The Factory + Bow Street
In 2010 Kirsten co-founded The Factory with fellow film directors John Carney and Lance Daly. The Factory was Ireland’s first filmmakers collective. A place for filmmakers created by filmmakers. Being a part of The Factory was like being in a band. No membership fees, no agenda, no limitations. The building was freezing, there was no plush carpet, it ran on crazy passion, a labor of love.
With the arrival of respected filmmaker Shimmy Marcus and world renowned international acting coach Gerry Grennell, The Factory was expanded into ‘Bow Street Academy’. It is now a center for innovation in screen acting, honing in on the psychology, philosophy, and even the physiology of acting.
