Carole Ann Wilson

Carole Ann was born in 1946 in North West London with the theatre in her blood - her grandfather was a well-known Music Hall entertainer, John Wilson. From an early age, she knew she wanted to be an actress. At the age of three, she started singing and dancing classes and began performing on stage before she was four years old. She appeared in many musical shows, and at the age of five, was the youngest actress to perform for the Queen Mother, in a Royal Charity Gala Concert at the Albert Hall in London. She attended grammar school and in her final year, decided to audition for a part in the school play, Sheridan's "The Rivals". During the general read-through, Carole, who was always the class clown, read several of the parts in various accents. The director told her that she'd got the part she auditioned for and also the job of accent coach for three of the other actors. In 1963, Carole Ann started work, as a trainee secretary, at the Guinness Brewery in London, where she met her husband Jim. They married in 1965 and had four children - three daughters and a son. It was then that she accepted the fact that it was unlikely she would ever get the chance to realize her dream of becoming a professional actress. In her mid-thirties, she joined the Sutton Theatre Company and played many roles in musicals and plays. Carole's first leading role was "Calamity Jane" in the well-known musical. She also played Babe Williams in "The Pyjama Game" and Golde in "Fiddler on the Roof". Her husband Jim, a talented singer and actor, also appeared on stage with her. Tragically, in 1993, Jim was diagnosed with lung cancer and he died in July 1994. Although Carole had been performing on stage for many years, she had never had any formal training as an actor, so five years later at the age of 53, she decided to study drama. She passed her LAMDA Gold exam with honours after seven months and her ALAM a year later. As a student in 2000, Carole performed in an open-air production of "Henry V" at the Arundel Festival. Later that year, she found an agent and won the part of 'Granny Turner' in a production of the the play "A String of Pearls" at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester, (directed by Jo Harmston). In the audience was David Wood, a well-known writer/director of children's plays and musicals. It just happened that he was about to cast a production of his musical "The Gingerbread Man" and was looking for a character actress to play the part of 'The Old Bag'. Carole was invited to audition and won the part. Carole auditioned for the role of Maddy in Louis Leterrier's "Unleashed" (2005) and in January 2003 she learned that she'd won the part. It was only then that she discovered that the film was a Luc Besson production and that she would be working with Jet Li, Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins! In February 2003, she went to Paris to meet the Director, Louis Leterrier and the rest of the cast.