12 Facts About Lenny Abrahamson

Leonard Ian Abrahamson was born on 30 November 1966 and is an Irish film and television director.

Lenny Abrahamson was born in Rathfarnham, Dublin, the son of Jewish parents Edna and Max Lenny Abrahamson, a solicitor.

Lenny Abrahamson's grandmother was a childhood friend of the future President of Israel, Chaim Herzog; both were the children of Jewish immigrants to Ireland, and grew up on Bloomfield Avenue in Portobello.

Lenny Abrahamson was educated at The High School and Trinity College Dublin, where he was elected a scholar in philosophy in 1988, having transferred after a year of studying theoretical physics.

Lenny Abrahamson was offered a scholarship to study for a PhD in Philosophy at Stanford University.

Lenny Abrahamson abandoned his studies after six months and returned to Ireland to take up filmmaking, initially directing commercials, filming a popular series of adverts for Carlsberg.

In 2012, Lenny Abrahamson won his third IFTA for best film with What Richard Did.

Lenny Abrahamson revealed that he was working on a film called Frank, which is set in Britain, Ireland, and the USA, in a December 2012 interview with Eurochannel.

Lenny Abrahamson next directed the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel, Room, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.

In 2015, Lenny Abrahamson was working on A Man's World, a film based on Emile Griffith's boxing rivalry with Benny Paret.

In 2016, it was confirmed that Lenny Abrahamson was attached to direct Neal Bascomb's upcoming book The Grand Escape, a true story of three daredevil World War I pilots being held in Germany's most infamous POW prison.

Lenny Abrahamson is married to Monika Pamula, a Polish-born film studies teacher; the couple have two children.