Sheila Sim

Sheila Sim
Lady Attenborough at Canterbury, October 2004
Born	Sheila Beryl Grant Sim 5 June 1922 (1922-06-05) Liverpool, England
Years active	1944–55
Spouse	Richard Attenborough (m. 22 January 1945)
Children	Michael (b. 1950) Jane (1956 - 26 December 2004) Charlotte (b. 1959)

Sheila Beryl Grant Attenborough, Lady Attenborough (born 5 June 1922), known professionally by her maiden name Sheila Sim, is an English film and theatre actress and the wife of actor and director Richard Attenborough.

Career

Sim was mainly active as an actress in the 1940s and 1950s: amongst her credits are the role in the Powell and Pressburger 1944 film, A Canterbury Tale; she starred alongside her husband in the Boulting brothers' The Guinea Pig of 1948; and opposite Anthony Steel in 1954's West of Zanzibar.

In theatre, she notably co-starred with her husband, Richard Attenborough, in the first production of The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, which opened in London in 1952 (creating the role of Mollie Ralston). This thriller has since become the world's longest-running production of a play.

After recruitment by Noël Coward, Sim has actively served the Actors' Charitable Trust for more than 60 years. She was instrumental in the success of two redevelopments of the actors' care home, Denville Hall, in the 1960s and 2000s, and is currently a Trustee and Vice President of the charities.

More recently, Sim has been a significant benefactor to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where she originally trained; her husband has been RADA's president since 2003.

Family

Sim married Richard Attenborough on 22 January 1945 and they have lived in a house on Richmond Green in London since 1956.

The couple had three children, Michael, Jane, and Charlotte. Jane, along with her 15-year-old daughter, Lucy, and her mother-in-law, also named Jane, were killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami as it struck their villa on the coast of Thailand on 26 December 2004. Michael and Charlotte are both involved, like their parents, in the dramatic professions: he as a director, she as an actress. Sim's brother, Gerald, is also an actor.

Selected filmography

• A Canterbury Tale (1944)
• Great Day (1945)
• Dancing with Crime (1947)
• The Guinea Pig (1948)
• Dear Mr. Prohack (1949)
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
• The Magic Box (1952)
• West of Zanzibar (1954)
• The Night My Number Came Up (1955)

External links

• Sheila Sim at the Internet Movie Database