UK and Irish Acting Schools Open LA and New York Campuses
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- Bow Street Academy opens its first overseas campus in LA this September at The Lot at Formosa — the historic site where Charlie Chaplin founded United Artists — with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kirsten Sheridan overseeing it on the ground.
- The Identity School of Acting, founded in London in 2003 by Femi Oguns and known for launching John Boyega, Letitia Wright and Damson Idris, opened its LA outpost in 2018 at East Hollywood's Thymele Arts Center with around 300 students; the school is now hunting for a new LA site after a property ownership change.
- LAMDA, London's oldest drama school (founded 1861), opened a New York office and studio on Eighth Avenue in early 2025 to serve American students — who now make up roughly one in three of its enrollees — with auditions, networking events and a planned short-course program.
- The curriculum pillar behind Bow Street is the Gerry Grennell Method — Grennell has coached Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, plus the late Heath Ledger on his Joker performance; Oscar Isaac, a client for over a decade, recently became a Bow Street patron.
- The schools' expansion tracks a hiring pattern that has British and Irish actors routinely cast as Americans — from Andrew Scott and Josh O'Connor in "Wake Up Dead Man" to Emily Blunt, Colin Firth and Eve Hewson in Spielberg's "Disclosure Day."
- Bow Street alumni are behind some of the transatlantic trend's biggest wins: Barry Keoghan is playing Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes' four Beatles biopics, while Louis McCartney — last year's Tony winner for "Stranger Things: The First Shadow" — has just been cast as Ringo in BBC drama "Hamburg Days."
Why it matters: American actors are now crossing the Atlantic for the screen-acting methodology that fueled the British/Irish Hollywood takeover — Barry Keoghan's Beatles biopic casting is Bow Street's proof point. With three UK and Irish schools planting permanent flags in LA and New York, U.S. training programs face fresh competition for aspiring screen actors while casting directors gain access to talent trained in the same ensemble and interior-driven techniques.
