EXCLUSIVE: Bow Street Academy Los Angeles, the first overseas campus of Ireland’s Bow Street Academy acting school, will be based at the The Lot at Formosa.
The 11-acre campus in West Hollywood was originally built in 1912 and acquired in 1918 by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, becoming the first studio lot owned and operated by a woman. Over the next century it operated as United Artists Studio, Samuel Goldwyn Studio, and Warner Hollywood Studios before taking its current name in 2007.
Among the films made on the lot were Scarface (1932), Wuthering Heights (1939), Some Like It Hot (1959), and West Side Story (1961), as well as recent series including Big Little Lies and Euphoria.
At the center of Bow Street 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 members including Barry Keoghan, Louisa Harland, and Jack Reynor.
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.
“This lot was built by actors who were also producing, directing, and inventing the language of screen acting. That spirit is exactly what we teach. It is not nostalgia. It is a working environment where the craft is alive every day, and that is the right place to train screen actors,” said Gerry Grennell.
“There is something fitting about a school built on the work of actors finding its home on a lot that was built by actors. It was the start of a revolution when actors like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin established a sanctuary, an artist-driven alternative to the traditional studio system. Bow Street Academy aligns itself with that original spirit of autonomy, of artists taking charge of their craft again,” added Sheridan.
