Dame Sheila Cameron Hancock is an English actress, panelist, theatre director, and author who has been active since 1953. Her fans know her for her versatility on television, stage, and screen. Moreover, the 90-year-old actress inspires many through her skills, positivity, and charm.
Born in Blackgang, Isle of Wight, Sheila Hancock made a notable appearance in ‘Strictly Come Dancing,’ the BBC reality show, in 2012. She has performed several roles in the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She married Alec Ross in 1955, who died from cancer in 1971. Their daughter, Melanie, was born in 1964.
Two years after her first husband died, Sheila married John Thaw, who adopted Melanie. She birthed a daughter and adopted John’s daughter, born from his first wife. It is how they ended up having three daughters. But fate had other plans for Sheila. John died of cancer in 2002. Both of her husbands and all three daughters joined the field of acting.
She has been a part of both contemporary and classic plays. However, now she understands that her body has started to fail her. Moreover, she fought her cancer in the late 1980s and saw her daughter fighting stage-three breast cancer in 2017.
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Sheila Hancock’s Net Worth
Sheila Hancock’s Net Worth gets estimated to be between $1 million and $5 million. Her acting career contributes a lot to her net worth. Moreover, she has been working for six decades. Her net worth was in the same range in 2020 and 2019, 384,000 in 2022, and $341,000 in 2021. Till 2020, her monthly salary got considered to be between $100,000 and $500,000.
Someone wanted to be a threat to her hard-earned money. Thieves broke into Sheila’s Costwold Cottage in 2019. They targeted only one house (Sheila’s house) and took valuable silverware away. She started living in the house when her late husband, John Thaw, purchased it in 1990.
However, Sheila’s daughter, Melanie, lives in that house now, and Sheila keeps moving to and fro from this house to another one in Hammersmith, London. She also owns one in Luberon, France, for the past three decades. She realized how aging hit her hard when traveling became cumbersome after the pandemic.
Sheila has decided to donate the bulk of her property to the John Thaw Foundation she had set up in her late husband’s memory. She said that her daughters are happy with her decision. However, she also mentioned that she does not care even if her daughters do not like it. She keeps her dangerous rheumatoid arthritis in control by hitting the gym daily because she knows she is too lazy to exercise at home.
Sheila Hancock’s Work
Sheila worked in a repertory theatre for the first time in the 1950s and for the first time in a West End theatre in 1958 by appearing in Breath of Spring. His role in ‘Rattle of a Simple Man’ was her first theatrical success in 1962. Talking about her television career, she appeared for the first time in the 1960s in the British Television sitcom, ‘The Rag Trade.’
A three-act play written in 1963, ‘Entertaining Mr. Stallone,’ helped her make Sheila’s first Broadway appearance in 1965. She perfectly portrayed the essence of a love story in the 1979 musical named ‘Sweeney Todd.’ She was the first woman to direct a play in the Olivier Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) touring company.
Sheila has appeared in many television shows like Gone To The Dogs, The Bed-Sit Girl, Moving On, The Happiness Patrol, The Russian Bride, The Catherine Tate Show, Bedtime, New Tricks, and more. She presented several documentaries from 2010 to 2013 related to the Museum of London collection, the upbringing of the writers, and the history of watercolors.
Besides television and theatre, Sheila appeared in various films such as Carry On Cleo, The Dark Mile, Buster, Take a Girl Like You, From This Day Forward, and more. Thus, her career in twenty-seven movies lasted from 1960 to 2019. She has made guest appearances in television shows from 1960 to 2021.
Sheila got honored with the Laurence Olivier Award nomination, BAFTA nomination, Tony Award nomination, and more for her performances in numerous theatricals, television series, and films. The University of Portsmouth appointed her as the Chancellor in 2007.
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