Shira Piven is an American director, actress, and producer. She directed the 2014 film Welcome to Me starring Kristen Wiig. She is widely known as the sister of Jeremy Piven.
Raised in Evanston, Illinois, in her 20s, she performed with a theater company and started teaching and directing. She studied drama and music at Bennington College and graduated in 1983.
Piven has directed more than 20 plays in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., including Fully Loaded in 2006, actor Patrick McCartney’s one-person show Sinister Kid in 2013, and Victims of Duty in 2018.
In 1999, she founded the Water Theater Company in New York and led the improv theater group Burn Manhattan.
Her second feature film, Welcome to Me, was co-produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay in 2014 and stars Kristen Wiig as a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins the lottery and launches her talk show.
Piven has also directed television episodes for Transparent, Claws, Divorce, Sweetbitter, and One Mississippi.
She married writer and director Adam McKay in 1999. She and McKay reside in Los Angeles with their daughters Lili Rose and Pearl.