Sheila Gish
Acting
Biography
Sheila Gish (23 April 1942 – 9 March 2005) was a British stage and television actress. She was born Sheila Anne Gash in Lincoln, studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made her stage debut with a repertory company. Her first starring role in the West End was as Bella in Robert and Elizabeth. She continued to be best known for her stage work, but she also appeared in many television dramas, from The First Churchills (in which she played Mary of Modena) to the successful adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate (2001) in which she played the eccentric and outrageous Lady Montdore. She had two daughters: the actresses Kay Curram and Lou Gish (1967–2006) by her first husband, the actor Roland Curram. While filming That Uncertain Feeling for BBC2 in 1985, she met actor Denis Lawson, who was to become her second husband. She rarely appeared on film, her most notable performances being as Anna in the Merchant-Ivory film Quartet (1981) and as Mrs Norris in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1999). She is also known for her appearance in the 1986 film Highlander as Rachel Ellenstein. She took the part of the alcoholic Joanne in Stephen Sondheim's musical Company, directed by Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse and in the West End, in 1995. The following year, she won the Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical. In 1999 she played Miss Venable in Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer, directed by Sean Mathias with Rachel Weisz at the Comedy Theatre, London. One of her last stage roles was as Arkadina in the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of The Seagull in 2003. By this time she had been diagnosed with cancer and had lost an eye as a result of surgery. She died in Camden, London. Her final performance was for BBC Radio. She is Ewan McGregor's mother's sister-in-law. Her daughter, Lou, also died of cancer less than a year after her mother.
Known For
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Play for Today
Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.
Tales of the Unexpected
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses.
Inspector Morse
Jack Regan, an unethical officer of the Flying Squad, uses unorthodox methods to pursue criminals with the help of his partner, George Carter.
The Sweeney
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
Pie in the Sky is a British offbeat police comedy drama programme starring Richard Griffiths and Maggie Steed, created by Andrew Payne and first broadcast in five series on BBC1 between 13 March 1994 and 17 August 1997 as well as being syndicated on other channels in other countries, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series departs slightly from other police dramas in that the protagonist, Henry Crabbe, while still being an on-duty policeman, is also the head chef of the title restaurant set in the fictional town of Middleton and county of Westershire.
Pie in the Sky
Working from his home in a converted windmill, Jonathan Creek is a magician with a natural ability for solving puzzles. He soon puts this ability to the use of solving impossible crimes and mysterious murders.
Jonathan Creek
An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances.
Performance
An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
He fought his first battle on the Scottish Highlands in 1536. He will fight his greatest battle on the streets of New York City in 1986. His name is Connor MacLeod. He is immortal.
Highlander
Two sisters who set up a London fashion house for society of the early 1920s.
The House of Eliott
The Thin Blue Line is a British sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson set in a police station that ran for two series on the BBC from 1995 to 1996. It was written by Ben Elton.
The Thin Blue Line
The Adventurer is an ITC Entertainment TV adventure series created by Dennis Spooner that ran for one season from 1972 to 1973. It premiered in the UK on 29 September 1972. The show starred Gene Barry as Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means who poses as a glamorous American movie star.
The Adventurer
New Scotland Yard is a police drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV from 1972 and 1974. It features the activities of two officers from the Criminal Investigations Department in the Metropolitan Police force headquarters at New Scotland Yard, as they dealt with the assorted villains of the day.
New Scotland Yard
Anna Karenina was a 1977 BBC television adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel & tragic story of the love affair between Vronsky, a Russian Count and Anna Karenina, a married upper class woman. Nicola Pagett takes the role of Anna, a young woman who is married to a man twenty years her senior (Eric Porter), and who begins a passionate affair with the handsome Count Vronsky (Stuart Wilson). When she falls pregnant, Anna decides to dissolve her marriage and wed Vronsky, but true happiness proves elusive.
Anna Karenina
Worlds Beyond is a British television anthology broadcast on ITV from 1986 to 1988, based on real-life supernatural experiences described in archival documents from the Society for Psychical Research. A book was also released to accompany the series.
Worlds Beyond
Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford.
Mansfield Park
Dramatization of Nancy Mitford's novel about three aristocratic young girls' adventures in love.
Love in a Cold Climate
Diana, a beautiful but shallow and easily distracted model and failed actress, toys with the affections of several men while attempting to gain fame and fortune in Swinging London.