Sheila Sim

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Sheila Beryl Grant Attenborough, Baroness Attenborough (born 5 June 1922), known professionally by her maiden name Sheila Sim, is a British film and theatre actor, and the wife of actor Richard Attenborough.

Sheila Sim was born one year before her husband, whom she married in 1945. She was mainly active as an actor in the 1940s and 1950s; amongst her credits are the rôles in the 1944 film, A Canterbury Tale, and in West of Zanzibar, from 1954.

In theatre, she notably co-starred with her husband in the first production of The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, which opened in 1952 (creating the role of "Molly"). This thriller has since become the world's longest-running production of a play.

More recently, Lady Attenborough has been a significant benefactor to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (normally known as "RADA"), where she originally trained; her husband has been RADA's president since 2003.

Lord and Lady Attenborough had three children: Charlotte, Michael, and Jane. Jane, along with her daughter, Lucy, and her mother-in-law, was killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004. Michael and Charlotte are both involved, like their parents, in the dramatic professions: he as a director, she as an actor. Lady Attenborough's brother, Gerald Sim, is also an actor.