EXCLUSIVE: Ireland’s Bow Street Academy acting school is heading to LA’s West Hollywood with Bow Street Academy Los Angeles, its first overseas campus.

At the center of the expansion is Gerry Grennell, the veteran and respected performance coach who has collaborated with stars including Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Oscar Isaac. Grennell also collaborated extensively with the late Heath Ledger across multiple projects, including The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain.

Grennell is joined at the LA school by co-founders Kirsten Sheridan and Shimmy Marcus. Sheridan is the Oscar and Golden Globe–nominated writer, director, and producer, most recently co-executive producer and writer on the Peabody–winning FX/Hulu series Say Nothing. She will be a tutor at the school and there are hopes that alumni may return to teach.

Filmmaker Shimmy is co-founder and artistic director of Bow Street Academy Ireland where he has spent more than a decade developing emerging screen talent.

Bow Street grew out of The Factory, which was founded in Dublin in 2010 as an Irish filmmakers’ collective, with students including Barry Keoghan, Louisa Harland, and Jack Reynor.

When Grennell joined that team, he brought with him a methodology forged through decades of professional coaching. The Gerry Grennell Method — the philosophy that underpins all training at Bow Street — “focuses on present-moment expression, emotional ownership, and the actor’s role as an interpretive artist working with the camera. It is a screen-first approach that includes psychology, philosophy, and physiology.”

The school defined its methodology to us as follows: “Bow Street has long insisted on training actors in real production conditions. Rather than relying on stage-based theory, the school’s process is screen-centered from the outset. Students work on camera, review footage, and refine their performance tools through direct visual feedback.”

Graduates of Bow Street’s full program include Louis McCartney (Stranger Things: The First Shadow), Niamh Algar (The Virtues), Laurence O’Fuarain (The Witcher: Blood Origin), Ann Skelly (Vikings), and Peter Claffey (Knights of the Seven Kingdoms). Oscar Isaac, who has worked closely with Grennell for more than a decade, recently became an official patron of the Academy.

“Los Angeles is where the work lives. It made sense to bring the method here. Not to compete with what already exists, but to enhance it. We train actors to work with the camera, not for it. That distinction matters,” said Gerry Grennell, Co-Founder, Bow Street Academy Los Angeles.

Sheridan said: “The Factory started in a room in Dublin with a handful of artists who believed in each other. What we built there was a community before it was a school. The talent was always there — it just needed a place to grow. Now we’re building that place here. That’s what this city needs more of.”

Added Shimmy: “The training at Bow Street has never been about manufacturing stars. It’s about developing artists. Having seen firsthand how our curriculum has guided our graduates to the top of the industry, we are so excited to now be working with the extraordinary talent in LA.”