Sheila Ballantine, a British actor whose stage career spanned more than 70 years, has died aged 98. She built a reputation for gravitating towards the highest-calibre writers, directors and companies of her era, appearing with the Old Vic, the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in works by John Osborne, Simon Gray, Joe Orton and David Storey, and became particularly known for dark, comic roles including the murderous nurse Fay in Orton's Loot.

Born in Hackney to a Post Office telephone engineer and a former apprentice milliner, Ballantine trained at the Old Vic theatre school under Michel Saint-Denis before making her professional debut in 1947 in The Snow Queen. She went on to work alongside actors such as Peggy Ashcroft, Joan Plowright and Alan Bates, made her television debut in 1957 in the BBC's Nicholas Nickleby, and continued appearing on screen until 2008 in Foyle's War, alongside stage roles including an Alan Ayckbourn trilogy and Stephen Bill's Curtains.