Sheila Atim (; born c. 1991) is a Ugandan actress. She made her professional acting debut in 2014 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 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role 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. She starred in Netflix's successful sports drama Bruised and won another Laurence Olivier Award, this time for Best Actress, for her performance in the play Constellations.
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Early life
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."
Career
Theatre
Atim graduated with a degree in biomedical science from King's College London and trained as an actor at the Weekend Arts Centre in Belsize Park, London. She became involved in a workshop for a new play, The Lightning Child, which led to her being cast by her acting teacher Ché Walker for her professional acting debut at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. In 2020, she told the King's College alumni magazine that "I look back and feel a strong connection between my scientific and artistic sides. Science often comes up in my work – even the way I approach things in the rehearsal room is affected by having taken BioMed. Sometimes it’s little private parallels and analogies I make for myself."
The Lightning Child, written by Walker and Arthur Darvill, ran for several weeks from mid-September 2013 and was the first musical staged at Shakespeare's Globe. It received mixed reviews, with the Financial Times describing it as "a bold experiment, but sadly not a successful one" and The Guardian review calling it "oddly conventional and pointlessly excessive". The Independent said that despite the production being overlong and having problems with the structure, it was "hard not to like" the show.
Atim played Keira, the physical embodiment of obsessive–compulsive disorder, in Ghost Town at the York Theatre Royal in early 2014. What's On Stage praised her "mesmeric physical presence" and The Yorkshire Times review said that Atim "dominated the stage". Following this, Atim appeared with Ako Mitchell in Walker's two-hander Klook's Last Stand, being praised by The Guardian for an energetic performance and "tremendous stage presence" by The Daily Telegraph. In the autumn of 2014 she appeared alongside Adelayo Adedayo and Nakay Kpaka in Rachel at the Finborough Theatre and followed this by joining the touring production of Kae Tempest's Hopelessly Devoted. In addition to this, Atim played three roles in Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions: the Attendant in The Jew of Malta, Julia in Love's Sacrifice, and Assistant to Lady Politic Would-Be in Volpone. Walker's The Etienne Sisters, which included songs composed by Atim, opened two days before the end of her run in Volpone.
Atim's first major stage role was the non-speaking part of The Woman in Les Blancs at the National Theatre in 2016. The Stage said of her performance that "at the centre of the narrative is its most potent character: a gaunt, stooped and silent woman." The New York Times described a "spine-tingling production" and suggested that Atim's character may be an emblem of Africa. The Times later referred to her performance as "mesmerising".
Television, film, and music
Atim played Viola and Sebastian in a film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and won the Screen Nation 2019 Best Female Performance film award. In 2018 she portrayed Limehouse Nell in ITV's Harlots.
Atim plays piano, violin, bass, and drums. She composed the score for the play Time Is Love at London's Finborough Theatre in 2019, the year that she was named one of the cast of the Game of Thrones prequel series Bloodmoon. The planned series was cancelled following the pilot episode. She appeared as an alleged witch in the 2020 BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse and in 2021 she appeared in the television series The Underground Railroad and The Irregulars and the film Bruised.
In June 2019, Atim was named an MBE for her services to drama. She is also on the Board of Trustees of The Old Vic Theatre Trust.
On October 10, 2025, it was announced she will be playing the character of Akasha (previously played by Aaliyah) in Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat (2026) (better known as Interview with the Vampire Season 3).
