Sheridan Smith

Sheridan Smith (birthname; Sheridan Sian Smith) is a British actor who is also a lauded recording artist, stage actor, and television actor and personality. Her feature film debut was a supporting role in writer-director Nick Grosso’s Peaches (2000), with Matthew Rhys and Kelly Reilly.

A decade would pass, during which Smith became a highly praised and awarded performer in the theater and on television, until she returned to the big screen in director Tanya Wexler’s Hysteria (2011), a Victorian-era comedy starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, and Rupert Everett, and released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Sheridan Smith’s first starring role was in the James Nunn/Ronnie Thompson co-directed U.K. thriller, Tower Block (2012), with Jack O’Connell. Under Dustin Hoffman’s direction in his feature film debut, Smith played support to Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, and Michael Gambon in Ronald Harwood’s screen version of his play, Quartet (2012). Smith’s second starring role was in the MJ Delaney-directed British comedy, Powder Room, by Rachel Hirons (adapting her play), with Oona Chaplin.

Movie comedy continued to be the focus for Sheridan Smith, co-starring in The Harry Hill Movie (2013), written and starring stand-up comedian Hill, with Julie Walters and Matt Lucas. Smith played Bromwyn, a greedy and feisty dwarf in Universal Pictures’ The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016), starring Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, and Jessica Chastain. Smith starred in her third U.K. feature, the Keith English-directed comedy, The More You Ignore Me (2018), based on screenwriter Jo Brand’s novel, with Mark Addy and Ella Hunt.

After Smith’s British stage version of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl became a hit show at London’s Savoy Theatre and led to a U.K. tour, the stage version was recorded for a digital film by director Robert Delamere, and shown in British cinemas in 2018.

Despite being part of a distinguished cast including Jack Whitehall, Ray Winstone, Matt Lucas, Tom Courtenay, and Julie Walters, Smith’s next movie, The Queen’s Corgi (2019), the Belgian-U.K. animated comedy spoofing the British Royals, bombed at the box office and scored a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sheridan Smith joined Courtenay again, along with lead Jenny Agutter (continuing her original role) in the sequel, The Railway Children Return (2022), directed by Morgan Matthews.