Kate Sheil is an Australian stage and television actress, whose roles include prison officer Janet Conway in the cult television series Prisoner.
Biography
Sheil first appeared in the 1971 television movie What for Mariane? During the next two years, she appeared on the television series Ryan, Boney, Matlock Police and as a regular cast member of situation comedy Birds in the Bush in 1972. She also had several appearances on Homicide from 1971 to 1976.
In 1975, she made her film debut in Ayten Kuyululu'sThe Golden Cage with Ilhan Kuyululu and Sait Memisoflu. She portrayed Sarah, a young teenager who befriends two newly arrived Turkish immigrants Murat (Ilhan Kuyululu) and Ayhen (Sait Memisoflu). Falling in love with one of them, she eventually leaves him after he demands that she convert to Islam. She is eventually located by the man who proposes to her, however, she refuses despite her being pregnant. Sheil was the only Australian cast in the film.[1]
In 1980, she appeared on the television series Timelapse, Bellamy and in the television movie Air Hawk before being cast as school teacher Mrs. Velland in the 1981 film Puberty Blues. From 1981 to 1982, she also had a guest stint in Prisoner as Janet Conway, a former Wentworth inmate turned prison officer; a storyline which reunited her with Gerard Maguire from Me & Mr Thorne, and saw the two characters in a romantic subplot.
^Reade, Eric. History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film, 1896–1978. Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979. (pp. 171, 174) ISBN0-8386-3082-0
^Williamson, David and Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt. Australian Playwrights: David Williamson. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 1988. ISBN90-5183-029-7
