As Hollywood Moves Across the Atlantic, Why Are U.K. and Irish Acting Schools Opening in the U.S.?

Shimmy Marcus, artistic director of renowned Dublin acting school Bow Street Academy, recently caught the latest “Knives Out” instalment, “Wake Up Dead Man,” and was struck by the number of British and Irish actors playing Americans in lead roles.

“You’ve got Andrew Craig, Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scott and Daryl McCormick… and I was like: ‘What are we doing that’s so interesting?’,” he tells Variety.

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But “Wake Up Dead Man” is far from the only example.

Spielberg’s return to sci-fi with “Disclosure Day” was also top heavy with names from across the Atlantic showcasing their U.S. accents, with O’Connor again, plus Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Henry Lloyd-Hughes. Indeed, any casual glance over the last decade and more of Hollywood has seen what’s regularly described as an “invasion” of Brit and Irish actors — something that’s fuelled an ongoing and sometimes heated debate (especially when it comes to prominent historical roles, such as Daniel Day-Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln and David Oyelowo portraying Martin Luther-King).

It’s even reached a point where many are simply presumed to be American. Marcus says his partner recently praised the Irish accent of someone she’d regularly seen on U.S. shows. As he had to point out: the actor in question, in fact, “was Irish.”

Whatever is in the water in the Emerald or British Isles, Marcus is now hoping to export some of it Stateside, with Bow Street Academy opening up its first oversees campus this September in LA.

But it isn’t alone. While major Hollywood productions are decamping from the studios in the U.S. and heading east to growing film and TV hubs in the U.K. and Ireland, British and Irish acting schools are slowly charting a course west.

Bow Street Academy LA — which will be based at the historic The Lot at Formosa, where Charlie Chaplin first set up United Artists Studios — joins The Identity School of Acting, the London-based college that launched its first LA outpost in 2018. Meanwhile, LAMDA, London’s oldest drama school (it dates back to 1861), last year open an office in New York from which it plans to start offering short courses.

Bow Street Academy LA will be overseen on the ground by Oscar-nominated writer, director and producer Kirsten Sheridan (who recently wrote on FX hit “Say Nothing”), part of a trio of directors who — alongside Marcus — helped set up The Factory in Dublin in 2010. The space began as a grassroots home for filmmaker to chat, bounce and develop ideas and it there where then up-and-coming talents like Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar and Jack Reynor would come to flex their early skills. But it soon transformed into a dedicated acting college, relaunching in 2015 as Bow Street Academy (and more formally recognised as Ireland’s National Screen Acting School).

The school has been growing ever since, but the idea of branching out overseas came around 2023 when Marcus says they noticed a “huge uptake in applications, particularly of people from America — even Los Angeles.” When asking would-be students why they were prepared to travel all the way from the west coast of America to Dublin for acting lessons, he says a regular response would be: “Because we just don’t have this over here.”

But what exactly is ‘this’? What is the specific training not available in the U.S.?

Alongside its entirely screen-centred focus, Bow Street offers “an alternative approach to interpreting what [students] are doing as an actor between action and cut,” says Marcus. “I’m not interested in comparing ourselves to what others in the U.S. are doing, but it seems like a lot of the performances over there are displays of emotion, presenting the idea of what the character is going through, whereas our approach is more conceptualized on giving the actor empowerment to have agency over their own interpretation of what’s going on in the scene.”

The end results are performances that “feel more authentic and human,” Marcus asserts, with more of the actual actor in the character, which is built from the inside out. “So you feel like you’re being more of a voyeur when you watch the performance.”

Key to Bow Street and the secret sauce behind its entire curriculum is Gerry Grennell, the Dubliner who helped set up its first course when it was still The Factory.

While he’s often credited simply as a “dialect coach,” Grennell is a highly sought-after behind-the-scenes collaborator for a truly eye-popping array of names, having worked with the likes of Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway to name just a few. He famously helped the late Heath Ledger develop his performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight, while he’s been coaching regular client Oscar Isaac for more than a decade (including on “Dune” and “Frankenstein”). Underling their relationship, Isaac recently became a patron of the Academy.

New Bow Street tutors in the U.S. are currently being trained in the “Gerry Glennell Method,” which Marcus asserts has been “tried and tested on the highest sets.” But the man himself will also be at the LA campus working the Academy’s longer courses once doors open.

Like Bow Street, London’s Identity School of Acting was already a groundbreaking institution long before planting a flag in the U.S. Set up by actor-turned-teacher-and-agent Femi Oguns in 2003, the school — offering part-time acting classes — has helped give early springboards to the likes of John Boyega, Letitia Wright and Damson Idris and has contributed enormously to the diversity of the U.K.’s performing arts scene. It opened its U.S. branch in East Hollywood’s Thymele Arts Center in 2018 with around 300 students.

For Oguns, who also oversees the Identity Agency Group, what makes his school different is that its “built around the realities of the industry rather than tradition alone.” Identity’s tutors are working professionals, with the training reflecting the current casting landscape, he says. “We place a huge emphasis on preparing actors for employment rather than simply graduation.”

Earlier this month, the Identity School had to move out of its LA site due to a change in ownership at the property, with the hunt now on to find a new location for when terms starts again in September. Thankfully, notes Oguns, its online school is “thriving.”

While it’s not a campus, LAMDA’s office and studio facilities in Midtown Manhattan was borne out of an acknowledgement of the growing U.S. appeal of the historic London stage school, long considered a fertile training ground for the West End and Broadway. Nicholas Holden, LAMDA’s vice principal of academic, research and student affairs suggests around “one in three” of its students across its various degree and semester come from the U.S.

It was a desire to stay connected with its alumni and support their professional careers once back home that Holden says saw the school partner with the Association of Resident Theaters and rent a space on Eighth Avenue in early 2025. It now holds auditions and networking events at the site, alongside workshops and masterclasses. But it’s also looking to bring across its short course program that Holden says spans an “introduction to acting, to playwriting and everything in between,” and will offer a “really valuable catalyst to enabling people to experience British actor training in New York.”

A core element of this British actor training, and something Holden says “sets [LAMDA] apart from what people might experience in the U.S.,” is a focus on the ensemble.

“Very early on, our students understand what it means to work together and how a project, how their learning can be enhanced by being open to others, understanding others and how the whole is stronger than the individual,” he says. LAMDA graduates, he claims, are often identified within the industry, “because of their ability to work together and to create that ensemble ethos in rehearsal and then ultimately in production.”

Then there’s another celebrated and long-established London acting institution, RADA. While it may not have its own dedicated U.S base, it does hold a short course program, including an intensive, five-day “actor’s workout” in New York.

But it’s not all one-way traffic in terms of the transfer of knowledge. One of the things Bow Street’s Marcus says he’s been delighted to learn about U.S. culture is that “they never stop training,” as compared to Europe where “traditionally it’s like, I’ve done my three years, I’m ready to work.” This is why an open day at the school on July 26 ahead of its September launch will welcome anybody from the film industry — including non-actors who may be looking to retrain.

Whether they want Bow Street’s “Gerry Glennell Method” or LAMDA’s ensemble focus, clearly a central end game for the majority of U.S. students applying to these schools is to improve their chances of employment — of potentially nabbing a high-profile American role from the under the nose of an “invading” Brit or Irish star.

Marcus points to the success of Bow Street’s Irish alumni, led by Keoghan but including new stars such as Peter Claffey, the former professional rugby player who retired from the sport, enrolled in the Academy, soon joined the cast of “Bad Sisters” and is now best known for his lead role as Ser Duncan the Tall in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“But we’ve also got two Ringos and a John,” he says, noting that alongside Keoghan playing The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes’ four biopics, graduate Louis McCartney — a Tony winner last year for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” — has just been cast as the musician in BBC drama “Hamburg Days,” which also stars fellow alumni Rhys Mannion as John Lennon.

“So suddenly it’s really landing for us,” says Marcus. “And that’s our new motto: our graduates work.”