Sheila Sim

Sheila Beryl Grant Sim, Baroness Attenborough (5 June 1922 – 19 January 2016) was an English film and theatre actress. She was also the wife of the actor, director and peer Richard Attenborough. Career Sheila Beryl Grant Sim was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, only daughter of banker Stuart Grant Sim (1893–1975) and his wife Ida Isabel Carter, who were married in April 1920. Brought up at "Carnlea" overlooking Calderstones Park in Liverpool and later, 18 The Ridge at Purley in Surrey, Sim was privately educated before training at RADA. Sim was mainly active as an actress in the 1940s and 1950s. She appeared in the Powell and Pressburger film, A Canterbury Tale (1944); she acted alongside her husband in the Boulting brothers' The Guinea Pig (1948); and starred opposite Anthony Steel in West of Zanzibar (1954). In theatre, she co-starred with her husband, Richard Attenborough, in the first cast of The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, from its London premiere in 1952. Sim played the role of Mollie Ralston. After recruitment by Noël Coward, Sim 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 was a Trustee and Vice-President of the charities.