British and Irish acting academies are opening campuses in the United States even as major Hollywood productions increasingly relocate to film and TV hubs in the UK and Ireland, creating a curious crossover in the two industries. The trend follows years of British and Irish actors dominating leading American roles, prompting Dublin's Bow Street Academy artistic director Shimmy Marcus to seek ways of exporting that talent pipeline directly to the US.

Bow Street Academy will open its first overseas campus in Los Angeles this September, based at the historic Lot at Formosa where Charlie Chaplin once founded United Artists Studios, with Oscar-nominated writer-director Kirsten Sheridan overseeing operations locally. It joins The Identity School of Acting, which opened an LA branch in 2018, and LAMDA, London's oldest drama school, which opened a New York office last year offering short courses. Marcus points to films such as "Wake Up Dead Man" and "Disclosure Day," both featuring numerous British and Irish actors playing Americans, as evidence of the so-called "invasion" that has made such performers increasingly indistinguishable from their US counterparts.