Ellen Pollock

Ellen Pollock (29 June 1902, 29 March 1997) was a British character actress who mainly appeared on stage in London's West End. She also appeared in several films and TV productions.

The second child of Hanover merchant Adolph Meyer (1890-?) and Hedwig née Kahn (1876-1965), sister of Otto Hermann Kahn (wealthy investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts) and composer Robert Kahn, she became the stepdaughter of Raymond Anselmo Pollak (c. 1872-c. 1930) when her divorced mother remarried in April 1904 to the Austrian businessman, who himself had two sons from a first marriage to Elsa Julia Harris, a New Zealander.

A devotee of Bernard Shaw, she was president of the Shaw Society from 1949. In its obituary, The Independent wrote "Pollock is believed to have played, in a career spanning 72 years, more Shavian heroines than anyone else. She directed London seasons of his plays; and it was during the London premiere of one of his lesser-known works, Farfetched Fables (Watergate, 1950), that she announced Shaw's death from the stage."

Pollock's dedication to acting began as a seven-year-old, when she saw Sarah Bernhardt on stage; she knew then that she wanted to be an actress herself. Pollock was also a theatre director and a teacher of drama at RADA and Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art; and her varied television work included several appearances in The Forsyte Saga for the BBC.

She outlived both of her husbands, Captain Leslie Hancock and the artist James Proudfoot. She had one child with Hancock. Pollock was the subject of TV's This Is Your Life in 1992.