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.
[6] He 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.
He 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.
[10] Also in 2007, RTÉ screened Abrahamson's four-part TV miniseries Prosperity, which was written in collaboration with Mark O'Halloran, the co-writer of Adam and Paul and Garage.
Prosperity was nominated for six Irish Film and Television Awards in 2008 and won in two categories, Best Directing for Lenny Abrahamson, and Best Script for Mark O'Halloran.
[citation needed] 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.
[18] In 2016, it was confirmed that 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.