Jim Sheridan

Writer, director and producer Jim Sheridan's films have achieved popular and critical acclaim throughout the world and have garnered two Academy Awards®, 16 Academy Award® nominations and numerous prestigious international awards. Sheridan has received five personal Oscar® nominations: two for Best Director, for My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, and three for writing In America (Best Original Screenplay), My Left Foot (Best Adapted Screenplay) and In the Name of the Father (Best Adapted Screenplay). He received an additional Oscar® nomination, as producer, when In the Name of the Father was nominated for Best Picture in 1993.

Sheridan directed the riveting family drama Brothers, set against the backdrop of the war in Afghanistan.The film starred Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard and was written by David Benioff. Brothers was based on the Danish motion picture Brødre, by Susanne Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen.

Sheridan previously directed Get Rich or Die Tryin’, a vibrant autobiographical story based on Curtis Jackson's (aka 50 Cent) journey from a youthful life of crime to his rise as one of the world's best-known rappers. This compelling and dynamic infusion of both drama and music marked Jackson's screen debut and featured an impressive supporting cast including Oscar® nominees Terrence Howard and Viola Davis, and Joy Bryant.

Prior to that, Sheridan collaborated with two of his daughters, Naomi and Kirsten, on the critically acclaimed In America, a magical and personal tale of a family finding its soul. Based on his own experiences coming to New York as a flat-broke immigrant, as well as remembrances of a devastating family tragedy, the film starred Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Djimon Hounsou and sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger. The film garnered three Academy Award® nominations for 2003, including one for Best Original Screenplay, and acting nominations for both Morton (Best Actress) and Hounsou (Best Supporting Actor). The film also received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Original Song.

In addition to its Oscar® nominations, In America was also honored with Best Original Screenplay awards by the National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics Association and placed on more than 120 top-10 lists. The film received six nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards and one for Best Ensemble from the Screen Actors Guild, and Sheridan was presented with the prestigious Stanley Kramer Award by the Producers Guild of America.

Embraced by international audiences, Sheridan has nevertheless remained quintessentially Irish. He first drew worldwide attention in 1989 for his debut feature film, My Left Foot, which was based on the uplifting life of the Irish writer/painter Christy Brown, a man with such severe cerebral palsy he could only move his left foot.The film's critical and box-office success kick-started a renaissance of Irish filmmaking, and the film earned an amazing five Academy Award® nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sheridan.Daniel Day-Lewis was propelled to global stardom and the film marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Day-Lewis and Sheridan. My Left Foot went on to earn Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker Academy Awards® for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. The film also won the David di Donatello Award (the Italian equivalent to the Oscar®) for Best Foreign Film, among many other international awards and earned Sheridan a Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award nomination.

Despite numerous offers from Hollywood, Sheridan decided to remain in Ireland to direct his next film, The Field, featuring an Oscar®-nominated performance from Richard Harris as a farmer who vigilantly defends his land from real-estate developers. Sheridan also wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed modern fairy tale Into the West, directed by Mike Newell, which introduced the world to his more magical side with a story of an Irish Traveller community and an enchanted white horse that seamlessly merged reality with fantasy.

In 1993, Sheridan wrote, produced and directed In the Name of the Father, a powerful drama that recounts the struggle of Gerry Conlon, a man wrongly prosecuted and imprisoned for an IRA bombing, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson. Drawing both controversy and praise for its searing realism, the film went on to receive numerous Academy Award ® nominations, including those for Sheridan for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. In the Name of the Father also brought Sheridan a second David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Film, the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and another WGA Award nomination. Sheridan's next film, The Boxer, which he wrote, produced and directed, reunited the director for the third time with actor Daniel Day-Lewis, in a love story set against the explosive atmosphere of Northern Ireland. The Boxer received the award for Best Foreign Film at Spain's Goya Awards and earned Sheridan a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director.

Sheridan also wrote and produced Some Mother’s Son, directed by Terry George, and produced Agnes Browne, which was directed by and starred Anjelica Huston.

Under his Hell's Kitchen banner, Sheridan has executive produced three distinctive Irish films: Borstal Boy, which is about Irish writer Brendan Behan and was directed by Sheridan's brother Peter Sheridan; John Carney's teen drama On the Edge; and the award-winning docudrama Bloody Sunday, directed by Paul Greengrass, which garnered the coveted Audience Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and two British Independent Film Awards, among other accolades.

The son of a theater director, Sheridan grew up in Ireland, where his brother Frankie died of a brain tumor, one of the real-life events woven into In America.

Sheridan began his career on stage, co-founding Dublin's “alternative theater,” the Project Arts Centre, which launched such stars as Gabriel Byrne. He had numerous plays produced in Ireland, including the highly regarded Spike in the First World War, based on Jaroslev Hasek's novel “The Good Soldier Schweik.” When he was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship for writers, he was at that time only the second playwright ever to receive that honor.

In 1981, Sheridan journeyed to America (via Canada) to attempt to make it on the New York stage, with his wife and two daughters in tow (a third daughter was born in New York)—events that inspired the story of In America. While in New York, Sheridan received his only formal training in film, by enrolling in New York University's film school for six weeks. He ended up serving as artistic director of the Irish Arts Center, where his creative leadership helped to win the theater a 1987 Obie Award for sustained excellence. Two decades after he first came to America, Sheridan came full circle, by returning to New York to shoot In America.

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