Sharman Macdonald

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Sharman Macdonald (born 8 February 1951) is a Scottish playwright and former actress.

Macdonald was born in in Glasgow, and educated at the University of Glasgow, from which she graduated in 1972. She then moved to London, where she worked as an actress with the 7:84 Theatre Company and at the Royal Court Theatre, before she left (due in large part to Macdonald's stage fright). [1] While there, Macdonald wrote her first play, When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout; it was first performed at the Bush Theatre in 1984, and won the Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright. Some of the themes in Scream and Shout were inspired by games that her son, Caleb, played with his friends. Of this, Macdonald has said that "it's the result of a bet, this writing life. I was desperate for a second child. Desperate never to act again. Most of all desperate to stop eating lentils, French bread and tomatoes. We were broke, Will and me. We had one child. My hormones were screaming at me to have another. So. Will bet me a child for the sale of a script". [2]

She is married to the actor Will Knightley; they have two children, Caleb and Keira Knightley.

Sharman Macdonald's plays and screenplays include The Brave, commissioned by the Bush Theatre; When We Were Women, first performed at the Cottesloe Theatre; Wild Flowers, written for Channel 4 television in 1989; All Things Nice, commissioned by the English Stage Company and first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1991; The Winter Guest, which was made into a film, in 1997, directed by Alan Rickman; After Juliet, commissioned by the Royal National Theatre for the BT National Connections Scheme for Young People (in which Macdonald's daughter, Keira, starred as a young girl); and The Girl With Red Hair, which had its first reading in August 2003.

Macdonald's resume also includes the novels The Beast (1986) and Night Night (1988), the radio plays Sea Urchins (for the BBC) and Gladly My Cross Eyed Bear (1999), and the libretto to Hey Persephone!, performed at Aldeburgh with music by Deirdre Gribbin.