Sheila Allen

Sheila Allen (born 22 October 1932) is an English Shakespearean actress, who is best known to a wider public for her role on television as Number 14 in "A. B. and C.", the third episode of The Prisoner (1967) and as Cassie Manson in Bouquet Of Barbed Wire and its sequel Another Bouquet (1976-7).

Allen was born in Chard, Somerset, the daughter of Dorothy Essex (née Potter) and William Allen.^[1]

Stage work

Since the 1950s Allen has appeared widely in plays by Shakespeare, including for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in both Stratford and London. Her first leading role was that of Katherine ("the shrew") in The Taming of the Shrew for the Arena Company in Birmingham (1954-6). Among many other Shakespearean roles, she played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Bristol Old Vic Company, a production that moved to London (1957-8), and first appeared with the RSC in 1962. Since then, her parts have included Portia (The Merchant of Venice, Old Vic, London, 1962), Lady Percy (Henry IV, Parts I and II) (RSC, Stratford, 1966), Lady Macduff (Macbeth, RSC, Stratford and London, 1968), Lady Capulet (Romeo and Juliet, RSC, Stratford, 1967), Helen (Troilus and Cressida, RSC, Stratford, 1968), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, Shaw Theatre, London, 1973) and Goneril (King Lear, Stratford and London, 1974). Allen was still working well into the 21st century.

Television and films

The Prisoner

In The Prisoner Allen played a scientist who was one of many who failed in "the Village" to elicit from Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan) why he had resigned from a certain organisation. She was pressed by Number 2 (Colin Gordon) to use a new wonder drug and archive film to influence her subject's dreams, but he was able to manipulate the process and thereby to cause the downfall of Number 2. When not dressed in her subterranean laboratory in a white coat with her hair tied back, Number 14 was seen with flowing hair, walking around the Village in a cape of many colours - one of many iconic images from The Prisoner, which was filmed in Portmerion, North Wales.

Bouquet of Barbed Wire

In Bouquet, based on a novel by Andrea Newman and described by Philip Purser as a "kinky saga which was much discussed ... well made and acted",^[2] Allen's character was the wife of Peter Manson (Frank Finlay), who had an unhealthy obsession about his married daughter, Prue (Susan Penhaligon). Among many sexual entanglements, Cassie had an affair with her own son-in-law (James Aubrey).

Other credits

Allen also appeared with McGoohan in an episode of Danger Man ("Don't Nail Him Yet", 1964) and played the part of Mrs Adeline Clapperton, a condescending and self-regarding murder victim, in an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot, "Problem at Sea" (1989). Her many film credits include The Prince and the Pauper (1962), Children of the Damned (1963), The Alphabet Murders (1965), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

References

External links

• Sheila Allen (English actress) at the Internet Movie Database