Sheridan, Naomi 1972(?)-

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Sheridan, Naomi 1972(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1972; daughter of Jim Sheridan (writer and director).

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Newmarket Press, 18 East 48th St., New York, NY 10017.

CAREER: Screenwriter.

AWARDS, HONORS: Audience Award, American Film Institute Film Festival, 2003, and Best Original Screenplay, National Board of Review, both for In America.

WRITINGS:

(With sister, Kirsten Sheridan, and father, Jim Sheridan) In America (film), Fox Searchlight, 2003.

(With sister, Kirsten Sheridan, and father, Jim Sheridan) In America: A Portrait of the Film (original screenplay), Newmarket Press (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Naomi Sheridan is the daughter of Irish writer-director Jim Sheridan, best known for the films My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father. With her father and sister, writer-director Kirsten Sheridan, she is co-author of the screenplay In America.

The 2003 film is a fictionalized account of the Sheridan family's move from Ireland to America in the early 1980s. The movie revolves around an Irish couple who sneak into America across the Canadian border, claiming they are vacationers. They settle in New York with their two daughters. The movie chronicles the family's struggles, including the mother's dangerous new pregnancy, their poverty, the terrible living conditions, and the father's attempt at acting.

Boston Globe contributor Wesley Morris called the movie a "lesson-laden, tear-jerking fairy tale." Walter Addiego, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, acknowledged that the screenplay contains "potentially sentimental and decidedly familiar material" but added, "it got to me." In a review in the Los Angeles Times, critic Kenneth Turan commented that the film "is particularly adept at dealing with the immigrant experience, with lives lived on the knife edge of hope, poverty and despair." In an article in Variety, Pete Hammond wrote that Sheridan's script "skillfully and movingly walks the line between laughter and pathos, resulting in a unique coming-of-age scenario too smart to ever cross into maudlin remembrance."