Sheila Manahan

Sheila Manahan (1 January 1924 – 29 March 1988) was an Irish actress on stage and screen. She was associated with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in the 1940s, and had supporting roles at least ten films between 1948 and 1965. She also acted in radio productions and television programs.

Early life Manahan was born in Dublin on New Year's Day in 1924, the daughter of Captain John Manahan. She attended Scoil Mhuire, and was bilingual in Irish and English. She began acting in plays as a teenager. In 1948 she was in the original cast of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, in London. In 1952 she starred in Margaret Macloud's comedy Quest in London. On radio she acted in Sean O'Casey plays. Ann Willingdon in Seven Days to Noon (1950), Rose Moresby (sister to Jean Simmons's character and wife to William Hartnell's character) in Footsteps in the Fog (1955), Esther's mother in The Story of Esther Costello (1957), and Mrs. Jenkins in Only Two Can Play (1962), with Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling. On television, she was in an adaptation of Frank O'Connor's 1939 story "First Confession", broadcast on Thirty-Minute Theatre in 1969. Her last television role was as Peter Blake's mother in Dear John. In 1961 she married her second husband, the Scottish actor Fulton Mackay. "They were an incredible welcoming, inclusive couple", recalled actor Brian Cox in 2022. "They were like my real family, my surrogate parents in many ways." Her husband died from stomach cancer in 1987 at the age of 64, and she died from colon cancer in west London on 29 March 1988, also at the age of 64. They are buried together in East Sheen Cemetery in southwest London.

Filmography Film Year Title Role1948 Another Shore Nora 1949 Saints and Sinners Shelah Flaherty 1950 Seven Days to Noon Ann Willingdon 1955 Footsteps in the Fog Rose Moresby 1956 The Last Man to Hang Senior sister 1957 Seven Waves Away Woman on raft 1957 The Story of Esther Costello Esther's mother 1962 Only Two Can Play Mrs Jenkins 1965 Young Cassidy first neighbour

Television