ed sheeran biography movie

Who Is Ed Sheeran?

Ed Sheeran is a singer/songwriter who began playing guitar at a young age and soon after started writing his own songs. When he was just a teenager, he moved to London to pursue his music, and his outpouring of creativity added up to several early EPs and hundreds of live shows. Drawing attention for his online performances, Sheeran hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart before he ever signed with a record label. Since signing with Atlantic, Sheeran has sold millions of records and won Grammys for hits like "Thinking Out Loud" and "Shape of You," as well as his 2018 album, ÷.

Early Years and Career in London

Ed Sheeran was born on February 17, 1991, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. When he was young, he began playing guitar, showing early promise as a musical talent. When he was 11, Sheeran met singer-songwriter Damien Rice backstage at one of Rice’s shows, and the young musician found added inspiration. As the story goes, Rice told Sheeran to write his own music, and Sheeran set out the next day to do just that.

It wasn’t long before Sheeran was recording CDs and selling them, and he soon put together his first official EP, The Orange Room . With that accomplishment and his abiding ambition driving him, at only 14 years of age, Sheeran headed to London for the summer. Thinking he could find gigs in the big city, Sheeran left home with his guitar and a backpack full of clothes, and his musical career took flight.

Once in London, Sheeran got busy recording and playing the local singer/songwriter circuit and quickly released two albums: a self-titled record in 2006 and Want Some? in 2007. He also began opening for more established acts, such as Nizlopi, the Noisettes and Jay Sean, and released another EP, You Need Me , in 2009, a year that found Sheeran playing more than 300 live shows.

It wasn’t until 2010 that Sheeran made the leap to the next level in his career, and it came via online media, a route Sheeran had learned to use with great effectiveness. When a video he posted online got the attention of Example, a rapper, Sheeran was asked to go on the road with him as his opening act. This led to an even larger online fan base and inspiration for many more songs, which ended up filling three new EPs, all in 2010.

Albums and Songs

With Atlantic, Sheeran released his major debut studio album, + . An instant hit, the album sold more than a million copies in the United Kingdom in the first six months alone. Sheeran began co-writing songs with bigger artists, such as One Direction and Taylor Swift , and supported Swift on her 2013 arena tour.

'I See Fire' and 'x' (Multiply)

On a roll, Sheeran’s next success would come when his song "I See Fire" was featured in the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , and in June 2014, his next album, x , appeared, debuting at No. 1 in the United States and the United Kingdom. The project featured three Top 10 singles — "Don't," "Photograph" and "Thinking Out Loud" — with the latter winning the Grammy for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance in 2016.

'÷' (Divide)

In 2016, Sheeran took a hiatus to work on his third studio album, ÷. In January 2017, he released two singles from the album, "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill," which debuted at No. 1 and No. 6, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. Sheeran subsequently released ÷ in March 2017, and announced a world tour. His new album broke a Spotify record for first-day album streams with 56.7 million listens in 24 hours.

'Perfect Duet'

In late 2017, Sheeran delivered another hit with the love song "Perfect," also released as a joint effort with Beyoncé , titled "Perfect Duet." The original version hit No. 1 on the Billboard Pop Songs and Adult Pop Songs charts in mid-January 2018. Later that month, Sheeran added to his Grammy haul by winning Best Pop Solo Performance for "Shape of You" and Best Pop Vocal Album for ÷ .

'No.6 Collaborations Project'

May 2019 brought the release of the Sheeran- Justin Bieber track "I Don't Care," the first single from Sheeran's upcoming studio album, No.6 Collaborations Project . An immediate success, "I Don't Care" established a new single-day streaming record for Spotify. The English hitmaker followed with the releases of "Cross Me," with Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock, and "Beautiful People," featuring Khalid, with No.6 ultimately producing eight singles before picking up a Grammy nod for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Films and TV Shows

Sheeran has surfaced in numerous films as himself, including Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) and the Beatles-inspired musical Yesterday (2019). He also landed a recurring role in the 2015 FX series The Bastard Executioner , and later appeared in an episode of Game of Thrones and the Amazon anthology series Modern Love .

Copyright Lawsuits

As Sheeran's fame swelled, so did the number of cases against the Grammy-winning artist seeking compensation for copyright infringement. In 2014, songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard alleged that Sheeran's "Photograph" was ripped off from their track "Amazing," written for 2010 X Factor winner Matt Cardle. The case was settled out of court in 2017.

In 2016, the heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote Marvin Gaye 's 1973 classic "Let's Get It On," claimed that Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" borrowed extensively from the Gaye track. The case was dismissed the following year, but Sheeran was hit with a new lawsuit in June 2018 over the same song from Structured Asset Sales, which owned part of Townsend's catalog.

In early 2018, Sean Carey and Beau Golden sought $20 million in damages over claims that "The Rest of Our Life," co-written by Sheeran for country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill , copied their song "When I Found You," recorded by Jasmine Rae. The lawsuit was settled late in the year.

Royal Honors and Personal Life

On December 7, 2017, Sheeran was made a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his services to music and charity.

After receiving the honor from Prince Charles , Sheeran gushed about the occasion, but also noted it was bittersweet: "My grandfather ... he died on this day four years ago, so it's actually quite a nice full circle thing," he said, according to the prince's Twitter account. "I guess he'd be pretty proud."

A few weeks later, Sheeran announced that he had celebrated another momentous occasion by getting engaged to girlfriend Cherry Seaborn just before the new year. In August, he revealed that the two had secretly gotten married since then, telling the surprised interviewer that he's never "too public" about such personal details. In August 2020, the pair welcomed their first child, daughter Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1991
• Birth date: February 17, 1991
• Birth City: Halifax
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: English artist Ed Sheeran is a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter known for hit songs like 'Thinking Out Loud,' 'Photograph,' 'Shape of You' and 'Perfect.'
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Ed Sheeran Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/ed-sheeran
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: September 8, 2020
• Original Published Date: August 21, 2014

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When I was a kid, the guy who taught music classes in my school was an aging hippie with a long beard. He’d hand out tambourines and triangles and teach us simple songs. At the end of each class, he would regale us, unprompted, with first-hand stories of Beatlemania. He basically lived out the real-life version of Robert Zemeckis’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” traveling to New York City with his friends to try to score tickets to “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the Beatles’ historic first appearance. (He failed, but he did stand in the mob outside the hotel where the Beatles were staying.) We were 8 years old and had no idea what he was talking about. His enthusiasm was catching, though. I learned how to harmonize by singing along to my parents’ Beatles albums. (I recommend this approach.) The Beatles were just  there , absorbed by osmosis. If nothing else, Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday,” which imagines a world where the Beatles never happened, made me think about what would it be like to hear “Yesterday” for the first time, what life would be like if the Beatles didn’t exist. The film, scripted by Richard Curtis , explores some of the implications of its premise, but, frustratingly, skips over others. 

To call Jack ( Himesh Patel ) a “struggling musician” is an understatement. He plays in coffee shops, populated only by his friends. He sings on an empty boardwalk. His childhood friend Ellie ( Lily James ), who fell in love with him—and his music—when he played Oasis’ “Wonderwall” at a talent show in grade school, acts as his manager, giving him pep talks, fired up by her belief in him. He lives with his parents in Suffolk, and is ready to throw in the towel when, one night, the earth experiences a 12-second blackout. During those 12 seconds, Jack is hit by a bus, and when he wakes up in the hospital realizes something weird has happened when he says to Ellie “Will you still feed me when I’m 64?” and she doesn’t recognize the lyrics. “Why 64?” she asks with curiosity. Jack races to Google, and no matter what the combination of search terms, no trace of the Beatles is to be found. Curtis has a lot of fun with how absurd it would be if you mentioned “The Beatles” to people and they asked “What’s that?” Jack makes the choice to start playing these “lost” songs, passing them off as his own. 

He plays “Yesterday” for his friends, and the looks on their listening faces is a potent—and welcome—reminder of the song’s melancholy beauty. The entire film stops, allowing us the space to really listen. But when Jack plays the songs at gigs, he’s just background noise. So this makes him wonder: maybe it’s me who is the problem? The songs are great, but I am not. There was an alchemical thing that happened with the Fab Four, and without that, maybe the rest wouldn’t have followed. This is an interesting possibility, which the film for the most part does not explore. Eventually, Jack records a few of the songs, appearing on local television shows to promote “his” music. Ed Sheeran (playing himself in a very self-deprecating cameo) catches one of these television spots, and swoops in to take Jack on tour with him. When Jack decides to play “Back in the U.S.S.R.” to an all-Russian crowd in Moscow, mayhem erupts (it’s a great scene), and the video of the performance goes viral. Sheeran murmurs, “I was always told someone would come along and be better than me. You’re Mozart and I’m Salieri.” 

Debra Hammer ( Kate McKinnon ), a shark-like record label exec sidles up to Jack after a show, talons out, and before he knows it, he’s in Los Angeles being offered “the poisoned chalice” of fame (as Debra calls it). McKinnon puts such a deadpan spin on lines like: “I have a question, Jack. Is this as good as you can look?” that she almost single-handedly indicts the entire PR machinery of show business. The music industry is lightly lampooned, when some ad exec. nixes the album title  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  as having “too many words” and points out that calling an album  The White Album  has “serious diversity issues.” There are some fun sequences, like Jack trying, with a sense of increasing urgency, to remember the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby,” fearing if he doesn’t the song will be lost forever. 

“Yesterday” dodges many of its most interesting ideas. Jack is a worldwide phenomenon almost instantly. But if the Beatles hadn’t happened, there would have been a ripple effect. It’s incorrect to say “Well, if it hadn’t been the Beatles, it would have been someone else.” That’s not how culture works. So much of it is lightning  not  striking twice, of right-place-right-time mixed with the right combination of people at the right moment. It had to be John, Paul, George and Ringo. In “Yesterday,” the music business is more or less the same as it is now. But how many artists have been inspired by the Beatles, and then that inspiration flowed into the next generation and the next? How many contemporary songwriters still show the Beatles’ influence? It’s very intriguing early on when Jack plays Beatles songs at coffee-shop gigs, and nobody even looks over. The music has zero impact on these people. What if things had developed so differently in the Beatles’ absence that people would have no idea what they were missing, and, frankly, wouldn’t care, because how can you miss what you’ve never had? These ideas are present, but “Yesterday” doesn’t dig into them.

The film gets caught up in the relationship between Jack and Ellie, which is not all that interesting, pieced together with cliches from other films. “Yesterday” wants to be a feel-good movie, and much of it did make me feel good. The looks on his friends’ faces when they hear “Yesterday” for the first time was very moving. I am conflicted about a choice made late in the film. You’ll know it when you see it. It felt cheap to me, and also strangely underdeveloped, although the line “It is so good to see you” got to me. Like I said: conflicted. 

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Himesh Patel as Jack Malik
• Lily James as Ellie Appleton
• Ed Sheeran as Ed Sheeran
• Kate McKinnon as Debra Hammer
• Camille Chen as Wendy
• Maryana Spivak as Alexa
• Lamorne Morris as Head of Marketing
• James Corden as James Corden

Cinematographer

• Christopher Ross
• Daniel Pemberton
• Danny Boyle

Writer (story by)

• Richard Curtis

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• TV Listings

Birth Name: Edward Christopher Sheeran

Birth Place: Halifax, West Yorkshire, England

Profession Singer

Subject (person only)

Reality cast member.

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• User reviews

Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All

• TV Mini Series

Follows Sheeran's personal life as he discusses how this trying time has affected him and his new music. It will spotlight how an unlikely child with a stutter rose to fame and how his chart... Read all Follows Sheeran's personal life as he discusses how this trying time has affected him and his new music. It will spotlight how an unlikely child with a stutter rose to fame and how his chart-topping hits were born Follows Sheeran's personal life as he discusses how this trying time has affected him and his new music. It will spotlight how an unlikely child with a stutter rose to fame and how his chart-topping hits were born

• Cherry Seaborn
• Hanan Rubinstein
• 6 User reviews
• 10 Critic reviews

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• May 7, 2024
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• May 3, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Disney Branded Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 33 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All

May 3, 2023

Documentary

For the first time, global superstar Ed Sheeran opens the doors to a definitive and searingly honest view into his private life as he explores the universal themes that inspire his music. This series follows Ed after he learns of life-changing news and reveals his hardships and triumphs during the most challenging period of his life. Blending exclusive, never-before-seen personal archive, present-day actuality, authentic interviews with his wife and loved ones, and intimate performances in cinematic locations, the series widens the lens to unearth what Sheeran thinks of the world, of himself and his music, as well as showcases a decade of hits enjoyed by subscribers around the world.

Rated: TV-14 Release Date: May 3, 2023

Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All | Official Trailer | Disney+

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