Sheila Atim

Sheila Atim MBE (born c. 1991) is a Ugandan-British actress, singer, composer, and playwright. She made her professional acting debut in 2013 at Shakespeare's Globe in The Lightning Child, a musical written by her acting teacher Ché Walker. Following critically acclaimed stage roles in the Donmar Warehouse's all-female Shakespeare Trilogy in 2016 among others, Atim won the 2018 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for her role as Marianne Laine in an original production of Girl from the North Country. She has composed songs for several productions and premiered her play Anguis at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has also been cast in several television series, including the cancelled Game of Thrones successor series Bloodmoon, the BBC's The Pale Horse and Amazon's The Underground Railroad, directed by Barry Jenkins. In 2021, she starred in Netflix's successful sports drama Bruised, directed and produced by Halle Berry. In 2022, she won another Laurence Olivier Award, this time for Best Lead Actress, for her performance in the play Constellations. Sheila Atim was born c. 1991 in Uganda and moved to the United Kingdom with her mother at the age of five months. She grew up in Rainham, London, and attended the Coopers' Company and Coborn School. She did some occasional modelling as a teenager after being recruited when she shaved the side of her head for a school prom. She appeared in a 2009 London Fashion Week event, All Walks beyond the Catwalk, organized by the British Fashion Council to showcase clothes for "real women". She later said that "modelling was never a big earner for me. I was unusual looking, so I couldn't go for commercial castings."