While filming his indie flick "Jet Trash," Sheehan met his onscreen partner, French Algerian actress, dancer, and model Sofia Boutella. Soon after, Sheehan and Boutella reportedly began dating IRL in 2014, followed by several joint appearances by the lovebirds.
In October 2015, Sheehan brought Boutella as his date while being honoured with the Burke Medal For Outstanding Contribution to Discourse Through the Arts from Trinity College. Sheehan joined Boutella for the June 2016 premiere of her thriller "Tiger Raid." The couple also hit the Edinburgh Film Festival's red carpet for their movie "Jet Trash," which starred and was coproduced by Sheehan, that year.
During a 2014 guest appearance at "The RTÉ 2fm Breakfast Show" with Eoghan McDermott, Sheehan gushed about Boutella when asked who the last person he'd been close to was. "It was a girl called Sofia," he said, adding that Boutella was his "lovely other half."
In a February 2017 interview with Irish Independent, the actor opened up about transitioning from being onscreen lovers to being a real-life couple. "It was a day-dreamy setting; the waves, the sand, and the sunsets. That kind of endears you to love," he said. "But then we went back to London and had to learn how to get on and how not to quarrel. Because when two people are in love, they quarrel the most because they're probably sensitive the most to one another." Nonetheless, the two found their footing. "We certainly get on now. I think you realise after a while, that what it is, we're both very married to our work, which after a while becomes this sort of core issue," he said.
The actor also briefly touched on how their jam-packed filming schedules sometimes keep them apart for long stretches of time. "When you're two actors, you're peripatetic, you have to drop everything and go sometimes, and a relationship has to adapt," he told the outlet. "You're sometimes staring at five months apart. But it always works out. She gets time off and hops on a plane; I get time off and hop on a plane. The longest we ever spent apart was just six weeks."
Unfortunately, the pair confirmed they split up by the end of 2018. In an October 2018 interview with Hot Press, Sheehan revealed the two ended things amicably. "We loved each other a lot. We had a similar life, which was problematic. Long-distance. A lot of long-distance, which was tough. It put a strain on things. But she's a magnificent person. She really is. Luckily, we're still friends. We still love each other a lot. We still acknowledge that, you know," he shared./p>
While speaking with Irish Times in July 2020, the "The Umbrella Academy" star revealed that the long distance between the two actors had at last strained their relationship, adding that he took up meditation to help ease the heartache. "I was away from home, quite far from home. I was in Portland, Oregon, doing a film that was fairly taxing. It was eight weeks, mostly at night. It was that film 'Bad Samaritan,'" he said. "I was at the end of a relationship. It was making me pretty sad, and it was making her pretty sad, and it was a lot. [Meditating] didn't do anything for six months, [but then] it just deepens and widens, and it casts tendrils out into previously unexplored dark inside yourself. It's delicious; it really is. It makes you more emotionally fortuitous."
