Across Dame Sheila Hancock has claimed she is going to be “cancelled by death” as she reflects on entering her ninth decade.
The world renowned actress, who has starred in the likes of Entertaining Mr Sloane, Sweeney Todd, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, and Cabaret, has been talking about her feelings around free speech in the modern age.
Sheila, who earned her damehood in 2021 for services to drama and charity, has been open about her opinions in recent years.
Sheila, who turned 92 in February, told the BBC last year that she feels only mortality will cancel her, as she is now closer to the end of her life and career than to the start.
She told the broadcaster: “If I say something outrageous and I'm cancelled, I'm shortly going to be cancelled by death anyway. It gives me a sort of 'oh dear I don't care, because I'm going'.”
As well as going into detail about her attitudes towards the modern trends of cancellation, she also reflected on how it was to be an actress in the 1950s.
She told the BBC’s Amol Rajan that she struggled during the decade, as she reportedly didn’t fit into the modern beauty standards of the time.
Sheila said: "I had acne, so I had a bad skin. Somebody saw me in Bromley Rep doing a performance as a model and they asked me to go and see them in the office.
"He sat me under a lamp and said, 'Well, you'll have to have plastic surgery because my nose is so odd, you know?' So I didn't fit the pattern of what is best to look like as a woman, really, in those days.”
This isn’t the first time Sheila has been frank in her views recently, with the veteran actress being very honest during an appearance on The One Show.
She told hosts Alex Jones and Roman Kemp her opinions on the state of modern politics, ahead of the UK marking 80 years since VE Day.
Sheila said how much she preferred wartime leader Winston Churchill over some of his prime ministerial successors.
She remarked: "Don't you just love Churchill? He always told the truth. He said 'we will probably be invaded, we will fight them on the beaches, we will do all that but we will never surrender.'
“He never promised us anything. All the lying gits we have at the moment promise all sorts of things and he never did... I'm sorry.”
