Kirsten Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland. She studied Film Television Production at University College Dublin before completing a Diploma in Film Production at Dun Laoghaire College of Art Design, Ireland’s national film school, graduating with Distinction.

Kirsten has directed five short films starting with the FilmBase/RTÉ short script award,The Bench (1995). She co-produced, wrote directed Patterns (1998), and directed The Case of Majella McGinty, both of which won many international film festival awards including; Clermont-Ferrand, Cork, Galway, Dresden, Aspen, and Chicago. Kirsten is the recipient of the Film Institute of Ireland/Guinness Outstanding Young Irish Talent Award 1998. Her first feature length screenplay Honor Bright won the Miramax Best Irish Screenplay Award ’98.

In 2000, Kirsten directed her first feature film, Disco Pigs (Cillian Murphy – Temple Films/Renaissance Films/Entertainment UK). She was selected as one of the three finalists in Europe for the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award with Disco Pigs, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2001 to critical acclaim, had its Ireland/UK release in 2001 and in the rest of the world in 2002. Disco Pigs won the Jury Prize at the Castellinaria Youth Film Festival, the Gold Medal at Giffoni Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Young European Cinema Film Festival and the Grand Prize Best Film at the Ourense Film Festival. Kirsten was nominated for Best New Director at the British Independent Film Awards and the Irish Film TV Academy Awards, and she won the United International Pictures Best Director 2002 award.

In 2003 she co-wrote the original screenplay for the critically acclaimed, autobiographical In America (2004) for which she received an Academy Award Nomination. She was also nominated for the Golden Globe, the Online Film Critics Society Award, the Writers Guild of America Award, and the Humanities Prize. In the Best Screenplay category it won the National Board of Review, The Christopher Award, and the Broadcast Critics Awards 2004.

In 2007, Kirsten completed her US feature film debut, August Rush (Warner Brothers), a contemporary musical fable which she shot on 10 major locations in New York City and stars, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Freddie Highmore, Terence Howard, and Robin Williams.

Kirsten directed Dollhouse in 2011 which premiered at Berlin International Film Festival and won at Odessa, Lund, New York Irish Film Festival and L’Europe Autour.

Kirsten co-founded The Factory in Dublin in 2010 and currently lives in Los Angeles.