Carmen Munroe
| Carmen Munroe | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Carmen Steele 12 November 1932 Berbice, Guyana |
| Occupation | Television actor, film actor, writer |
Carmen Munroe OBE (born 12 November 1932) is a British actress who was born in Berbice, Guyana (then British Guiana), and has been a resident of the UK since the early 1950s. Munroe made her West End stage debut in 1962 and has played an instrumental role in the development of black British theatre and representation on small screen. She has had high-profile roles on stage and television, perhaps best known from the British TV sitcom Desmond's as Shirley, wife of the eponymous barber played by Norman Beaton.
Munrow was born in New Amsterdam, Berbice, British Guiana, where she was educated at Enterprise High School. She came to Britain in 1951, and after studying ophthalmic optics for a year then working as a librarian in Tooting, in 1957 she began studying drama with a group based at the West Indian Students' Centre in Collingham Gardens, south-west London. She first appeared on the West End stage in 1962 at London's Wyndham's Theatre in Tennessee Williams’s Period of Adjustment, and went on to leading roles in other West End productions, such as Alun Owen’s There’ll Be Some Changes Made (1969), Jean Genet’s The Blacks (1970), and as Orinthia in George Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart (1970). She also acted in such notable plays as Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind and James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. She directed James Saunders' play Alas, Poor Fred for the Umoja Theatre, and also the British premiere of Remembrance, by Derek Walcott at London's Art Theatre in 1987.
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