Peter Sheridan

Peter Sheridan is an Irish playwright, screenwriter, and film director who was born in 1952 and currently resides in Dublin. Throughout his career, he has worked extensively across the performing arts, screen media, and prose literature, establishing a notable body of work in Irish theatre and cinema. He is also known as the brother of fellow film director Jim Sheridan.

Sheridan achieved early professional distinction in the late 1970s for his writing. In 1978, his literary efforts were recognized when he received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Shortly thereafter, in 1980, he served in an official capacity as the writer-in-residence at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. During this early phase of his career, he also created the short film The Breakfast, a project that went on to secure multiple awards throughout Europe.

As a dramatist, Sheridan has written a substantial collection of plays for the stage. His dramatic library includes titles such as Diary of a Hunger Strike, Emigrants, Finders Keepers, No Entry, and Children of Eve. He further expanded his theatrical catalog with works including Paint It Black, Shades of the Jelly Woman (Part One), The Liberty Suit, The Rock and Roll Show, and Women at Work. His stage output also encompasses the play Are You Havin' a Laugh?, as well as artistic involvement with Borstal Boy, a play written by Frank McMahon based on the original work by Brendan Behan.

Sheridan's work extended into television and feature filmmaking over the following decades. In television, he was responsible for writing the pilot episode of the series Fair City. He later took on a major cinematic project by both writing and directing the feature film adaptation of Borstal Boy, which achieved its official release in 2002.

In addition to his dramatic scripts, Sheridan has authored several non-fiction memoirs and a work of fiction. He debuted as a memoirist with the publication of 44 in 1999. He continued his personal writing with Forty Seven Roses, published in 2002, and later released Break a Leg in 2012. Outside of memoir writing, he published the novel Every Inch of Her, which was also made available under the alternate title Big Fat Love, appearing in 2003 and 2004.

Beyond his primary creative pursuits in writing and directing, Sheridan has made occasional appearances on broadcast television in alternative genres. In 2017, he featured as a contestant on the British television game show Countdown.