Sheila Sim

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sheila Sim, Baroness Attenborough (born June 5, 1922 in Liverpool , Lancashire , now Merseyside , † January 19, 2016 in London ) was a British actress . She was married to the British director and actor Sir Richard Attenborough from 1945 until his death in 2014 .

Life

Education and theater

Sheila Beryl Grant Sim was born in Liverpool in what was then Lancashire, now Merseyside. Her father worked for Barings Bank ; her younger brother Gerald (1925-2014) also became an actor. The family moved to Croydon when Sheila Sim was very young . She attended Croydon High School and, like her father, initially worked in a bank after graduating. However, she then decided to become an actress in order to escape the daily routine as a bank clerk.

She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London , where she studied for two years and during this time also met her future husband Richard Attenborough. In the summer of 1940, she volunteered with the Women's Land Army on a farm in Herefordshire as a harvest handler.

She made her stage actress debut in 1942 at the Intimate Theater in Palmers Green, London, in Ivor Novello's play Fresh Fields . She stayed with this repertory theater for six months. She then moved to the small Q Theater at the end of Kew Bridge for another six months . She then went on a 22-week tour of Great Britain with a small role in Noël Coward ’s comedy This Happy Breed ; she also played in the drama Landslide during the tour . Coward discovered Sim and Attenborough in 1941 and gave both of them first roles in some of his comedies. She was also engaged as a substitute and substitute for the pieces Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit . In 1943 she also appeared in Landslide at the Westminster Theater in London ; she also played the leading female role in the family comedy To Dorothy a Son .

In 1952 she was part of the first cast of Agatha Christie's crime play Die Mausefalle . Sim played Mollie Ralston, the heiress of the old Monkswell Manor , where she and her husband Giles open a boarding house . Richard Attenborough played Detective Sergeant Trotter at her side.

Movie and TV

Sim was active as a film actress from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. She made her film debut in A Canterbury Tale (1944), a modern propaganda adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger . Sim played a girl who works as a country girl during the war in agriculture. In a small town near Canterbury , they, a British and an American sergeant, clear up mysterious nocturnal attacks on young women before all three find their happiness in Canterbury, like modern pilgrims. The film failed the audience at the time; however, it was restored in the 1970s and is now considered a masterpiece. In 1945 she had one of the lead roles in the film Great Day, about a village that is stirred up by the impending visit of Eleanor Roosevelt . She embodied a young girl who has to fend off the love efforts of two admirers. She also played, also together with Attenborough, in the war drama Journey Together (1945).

In the film The Guinea Pig (1948), in which Attenborough played the lead role, a young working-class man who receives a scholarship to a prestigious public school, she was hired by the British film producer J. Arthur Rank for the female lead . Sim and Attenborough also played together in Dancing With Crime (1947; Sim as a waitress in a dance hall, Attenborough as a taxi driver) and The Wonderful Flimmerkasten (1951). She also had a supporting role as Janet Fielding in the melodrama Pandora and the Flying Dutchman , with Ava Gardner and James Mason in the lead roles. At the side of Anthony Steel , she played the female lead in the adventure film West Zanzibar (1954). She was Mary Payton, wife of the game warden Bob Payton.

In 1946, Sim made her television debut; she also worked for the radio and as a radio play speaker. Her last film appearance was in the drama You were 13 (1955), in which Michael Redgrave and Alexander Knox were her partners. Sim then withdrew from the movie business to devote himself to her family and raising her children.

Private and honorary positions

Sim and Attenborough were married on January 22, 1945. They spent their honeymoon in wintry, snowy Bournemouth . At first they lived in two rooms in Sim's parents' apartment. They later moved into a house in Chelsea that they renovated themselves. The marriage had three children, Michael , Jane and Charlotte. From 1956 the family lived in Richmond upon Thames , in South-West London. After Richard Attenborough's appointment as a Life Peer , her official title since 1993 has been: The Right Honorable Sheila Beryl Grant Attenborough, the Lady Attenborough . In December 2004, their daughter Jane and granddaughter Lucy died in the tsunami disaster in Thailand .

1968 Sim was Friedensrichterin (magistrates) in Surbiton in the judicial district of Richmond. She was a sponsoring member of the Richmond Society, which works for the restoration and restoration of the river bank of the Thames at Richmond. She was an active member of the Actors' Charitable Trust (TACT) for over 60 years ; the organization had been promoted by Noël Coward.

She was instrumental in the rebuilding and renovation of Denville Hall , an actor retirement home, in the 1960s and the years after 2000. She was also trustee and vice-president there. Sim was a sponsor of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

Sickness and death

Sim lived in her home in Richmond Green, London, from 1956 to 2012; In 2012 Attenborough put the house up for sale for £ 11.5 million.

In late May / early June 2012, shortly before her 90th birthday, Sim moved to Denville Hall, a retirement home in Northwood, Middlesex , for which she and Attenborough had raised funds for many years. In July 2012 it became known that Sim had been diagnosed with senile dementia .

In March 2013, Richard Attenborough moved to Sim in Denville Hall due to his deteriorating health. Her husband Richard Attenborough died in August 2014; Sim and Attenborough were married for almost 70 years.

Her younger brother Gerald Sim also lived at Denville Hall until his death in December 2014.

Sim died on January 19, 2016 at the age of 93 in the Denville Hall retirement home of complications from senile dementia. Her death was announced after a performance of The Mousetrap at the Theater Royal in Nottingham .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1944: A Canterbury Tale
  • 1945: Great Day
  • 1945: Journey Together
  • 1946: The Queen's Husband (TV movie)
  • 1946: The Ringer (TV movie)
  • 1946: Second Chance (TV movie)
  • 1947: Dancing with Crime
  • 1948: The Guinea Pig
  • 1949: Dear Mr. Prohack
  • 1951: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman)
  • 1951: The Wonderful Flicker Box (The Magic Box)
  • 1954: West of Zanzibar
  • 1955: You Were 13 (The Night My Number Came Up)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Richard Attenborough's widow Sheila Sim dies aged 93 following battle with dementia in: Daily Record, January 20, 2016. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d Acting legend and Attenborough widow Sheila Sim has died! ; Obituary in: TV Movie January 21, 2016. Accessed January 23, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Lord Attenborough's family rally round as Sheila Sim is hit by illness in: The Daily Telegraph, July 27, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  4. ↑ Lord Attenborough gives up an £ 11.5 million love affair in: The Daily Telegraph, October 29, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  5. ↑ New Ernest Hemingway biopic starring Nicole Kidman is unceremoniously panned by critics in the Daily Mail of May 31, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  6. ↑ Lord Richard Attenborough's Wife Suffering From Dementia contactmusic.com, July 27, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  7. ^ Film director Richard Attenborough moved to care home in: The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2016
  8. ↑ Gerald Sim obituary obituary in: The Guardian, March 4, 2015. Retrieved January 23, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Sim, Sheila
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sim, Sheila Beryl; Grant Sim, Sheila Beryl (full names)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool , Lancashire , now Merseyside, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH 19th January 2016
Place of death London , UK