Dame Sheila on getting work at 88: I’m last woman standing!
DAME Sheila Hancock believes she only gets work because most of her contemporaries have died – and she’s only hired to play characters in their twilight years.
The actress, 88, says her children tease that her only recent roles have been dementia patients or people who are about to pass away.
She said: “But now I’m getting parts because other people are dropping off the twig.”
Dame Sheila – currently on screens as a bedbound grump in ITV’s Unforgotten – did train to play a mountain climber for her role in 2017 film Edie. She said: “I was fitter than now, and I think they probably tried all the others and they all said, ‘You kidding? Climbing a mountain?
Get off.’
“And I was the only one who thought, ‘Oh this is a lovely part. I’ll go to the gym for three months and I’ll climb the mountain.’ But I’m incredibly lucky compared with some of my contemporaries that I still work and get interesting work.”
The first episode of crime drama Unforgotten drew 9.5million viewers.
And Dame Sheila – whose stage credits span Shakespeare to Cabaret – says she doubts she will tread the boards again. She told the Chichester Festival Theatre’s virtual Facing The Music event: “I think theatre will give me up at my age. I can just about stagger on the stage now, and I don’t know if I can get across it.” Earlier this week, Sheila – married to John Thaw for 29 years until his 2002 death – said she’d done nothing in lockdown.
She told Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: “I’ve stood and stared at the walls.
“I’m quite scared of coming out. I am so enjoying wearing dirty old trousers, no make-up, cutting bits of hair off when it gets too long. I’ve enjoyed being slutty. I look like a bag lady when I go out. Social services will be knocking on the door eventually.”