Sheila Hancock

Dame Sheila Cameron Hancock was born on 22 February 1933 in Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, the daughter of Enrico Cameron Hancock and Ivy Louise Hancock. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1952, and went on to become an English actress, singer, and author with a career spanning stage, film, television, and radio.

Hancock began her professional stage work in repertory during the 1950s and made her West End debut in 1958, stepping into the play Breath of Spring as a replacement for Joan Sims. The following year she appeared in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop production of Make Me An Offer, and in 1961 she took part in Peter Cook's revue One Over the Eight alongside Kenneth Williams. She starred in Rattle of a Simple Man in 1962. In 1965, Hancock crossed the Atlantic to make her Broadway debut in Entertaining Mr. Sloane, a credit that earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play in 1966.

Her West End career continued with a series of prominent musical roles. In 1978 she played Miss Hannigan in the original London cast of Annie at the Victoria Palace Theatre, a performance that brought her a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Two years later she took on the role of Mrs. Lovett in the original London production of Sweeney Todd at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, earning another Olivier nomination. She received further Olivier nominations for The Winter's Tale in 1982 and Prin in 1989. In 2006, Hancock played Fräulein Schneider in the West End revival of Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre, a role for which she won both the Laurence Olivier Award and the Clarence Derwent Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical. She was nominated for an additional Olivier Award for her work as Mother Superior in Sister Act the Musical at the London Palladium, a production in which she performed for over a year beginning in 2009.

Hancock's stage work also extended to classical and dramatic theatre. She appeared in The Winter's Tale, Titus Andronicus, and A Delicate Balance for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the National Theatre in productions including The Cherry Orchard and The Duchess of Malfi. She served as the first woman director of the RSC touring company, directing A Midsummer Night's Dream, and was the first woman to direct in the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre with The Critic. She also held the position of associate artistic director of the Cambridge Theatre Company. In 1993, she played Rose in the West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Gypsy. Later stage credits include Barking in Essex at Wyndham's Theatre in 2013, the UK premiere of Grey Gardens at Southwark Playhouse in 2016, Harold and Maude at the Charing Cross Theatre in 2018, and This Is My Family at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, in 2019.

In film, Hancock's credits include Carry On Cleo (1964), The Wildcats of St Trinian's (1980), Buster (1988), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), and Edie (2017). Her television career began in the early 1960s with the BBC sitcom The Rag Trade, in which she played Carole Taylor. She subsequently led the sitcoms The Bed-Sit Girl, Mr Digby Darling, and Now Take My Wife. Among her many later television appearances are EastEnders, Bleak House, New Tricks, Hustle, and the Sky One series Delicious, in which she starred alongside Dawn French, Emilia Fox, and Iain Glen across all three seasons from December 2016 to January 2019. In 2021 she appeared in A Discovery of Witches as Goody Alsop and played Eileen in ITV's Unforgotten. In 2023 she took the role of Liz Zettl in the BBC true-life crime drama miniseries The Sixth Commandment. She received two British Academy Television Award nominations for Best Actress, for The Russian Bride in 2001 and Bedtime in 2002.

Hancock has maintained an active presence in radio, appearing as a semi-regular contestant on the BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute since 1967 and providing the voice of Granny Weatherwax in BBC Radio 4's 1995 adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters. Originally from England, she holds the title of Dame and remains one of the most decorated British stage performers of her generation.