The critically acclaimed director visits his old homes in Dublin and New York for a ‘Keys To My Life’ special
At his family home in Seville Place, Dublin, where his mother kept eight to 10 lodgers, Sheridan says: “By the time I was 15, 16 I had met everybody you could meet in the world. I had met all the misfits, all the intelligent ones. It was an exercise in empathy, to understand other people and their travails and illnesses and family.”
Accompanied by presenter Brendan Courtney, Sheridan visits homes where he looks back on his life in Dublin and beyond.
The episode tracks his success, which led to ever-larger houses in ever- more-affluent neighbourhoods as his career grew.
The director, who became involved in the world of acting while studying in University College Dublin, began his career in theatre before moving into feature filmmaking in the 1980s.
His work has garnered 16 Academy Award nominations, 14 Golden Globe nominations, three Berlin International Film Awards, three Writers Guild of America Awards, eight Bafta and eight Irish Film and Television Academy Awards.
Sheridan, who is now based in London, co-founded Project Theatre in Dublin with Irish director Neil Jordan and served as the director of the Irish Arts Centre in New York.
He is father to five daughters, three of whom he had with his late wife Fran, who died in 2021. He also had one daughter with Moroccan director and actress Zahara Moufid, his now partner.
Jim Sheridan with his late wife Fran in their early 20s
In Keys To My Life, Sheridan visits his childhood home in a boarding house off Dublin’s Sheriff Street.
He also returns to his first married home in Ballybough; tenement rooms in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where he and his young family arrived in the early 1980s; and the homes he bought in Dublin and Wicklow in the 1990s.
First, Courtney and Sheridan walk through the director’s home, which he shared with his late wife Fran in Ballsbridge, and which he sold last year.
He recalls his first married home in Ballybough, where he quit his nine-to-five job and entered the world of theatre.
“I quit the bank and I went into a children’s theatre company with Neil Jordan and Peter, my brother. Then I went in the Project [Theatre], did a show or two, took it over and got 15 pounds a week,” he says.
During this time, while Sheridan was building his portfolio, his wife Fran worked as a teacher, keeping the family afloat.
Then, by the early 1980s, Jim had established himself as a successful drama director, and the family moved to New York.
While visiting New York with Courtney, the director spoke of his life in the city with his late wife Fran and their daughters.
Sheridan said it was a happy time for their family, living in a vibrant, edgy area, and it inspired his movie In America.
The film, which he describes as “more or less true”, follows a family as they set up a new life in New York. It got three Oscar nominations in 2007.
His daughters Naomi and Kirsten feature in the film.
In his latest work, his daughter Clodagh and partner Zahara feature in his film Re-creation.
Brendan Courtney on Keys To My Life
In Keys To My Life, Courtney and Sheridan also visit a home that the family lived in on the coastline in Dalkey.
The home brought trouble for the family, between a difficult planning process and a high mortgage, which eventually led them to sell the property.
The pair also visit a cottage the director bought as a hideaway to write in near Glendalough.
Season five of the show featured several Irish celebrities, including broadcaster and showband veteran Ronan Collins, former chief medical officer Tony Holohan, and Cork hurler and LGBTQ rights activist Dónal Óg Cusack.
Previous seasons have featured Today Show host Maura Derrane, Fr Peter McVerry, broadcaster Mary Kennedy and singer Frances Black.
Sheridan, who directed the Oscar award-winning film My Left Foot and the Golden Globe-nominated film The Field, will be the show’s last guest of the year.
His most recent film Re-creation is based on the real events of the murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in 1996.
It follows a fictitious trial where 12 members of a jury must decide whether British journalist Ian Bailey is guilty of Toscan du Plantier’s murder.
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The one-hour episode of ‘Keys To My Life’ is on RTÉ One today and is also available on the RTÉ Player.