Esta Charkham

Esta Malka Charkham (born 29 March 1949) is a British television and film producer and casting director known for the films Chariots of Fire (1981) and Supergirl (1984) and the television series Robin of Sherwood (1984), among others. She is a Director of the Talent agency Esta Charkham Associates; the Founder and Principal of West London Drama Training, an independent theatre school for young people between the ages of 7 and 18; and a former Director of the National Youth Theatre.

Born in London in 1949, the daughter of Montague 'Monty' Charkham (1924-2015) and Regina (née Stockman, 1925-2004), her grandfather was an immigrant tailor from the Ukraine who on arriving in the UK set up the family tailoring and menswear business in London. Charkham the tailors had 5 shops and bought Hawkes at Number 1 Savile Row and then amalgamated with Gieves to become Gieves & Hawkes with Monty Charkham running the shop and becoming the first generation son of a Russian tailor to run the number one establishment in Savile Row.

Esta Charkham was educated at Malorees Primary School, Brondesbury and Kilburn High School (1960–1965) and the National Youth Theatre (1965) for whom she appeared in a small role in Bartholomew Fair at the Royal Court Theatre in 1966 with David Calder and David Suchet. The following year she was cast in the leading role of Mrs Philton in the National Youth Theatre's original production of Peter Terson’s Zigger Zagger which opened at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre in August 1967 and which was filmed and broadcast as a Play for Today by the BBC in the same year. When the play opened in the West End in March 1968 with a professional cast Charkham was in the production and, wanting to be a professional actress, she left school against her parents' wishes. However, the play closed after two weeks and Charkham was now an out of work teenage actress with no qualifications. Shortly after in 1968 she was cast in her first television role was as an art student in a play called The Life Class for Theatre 625, in the same year appearing in the series B-And-B with Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly for the BBC.

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