Sheila is an artist who crosses generations. School is over, Friends, The Three Kings or Spacer… The singer remains a leading artist of French variety with the public. As she celebrates her 60th anniversary this year, the star looks back on the key moments of her life.
“I never saw myself other than in an artistic profession! As a child, I was fascinated by the circus and classical dance”, confides the star in the pages of Télé 7 Jours. Daughter of confectioners, Annie Chancel (her real name) made her debut in 1963, where she was the second part of the evening. Young lolita with puffy quilts and pleated petticoats, the singer is thrust into the spotlight and experiences a media whirlwind. While on the rise, she finds herself at the heart of a sad controversy.
“Sheila reportedly male. Sheila reportedly had surgery to become female,” headlined some tabloids. A “nightmare” for the artist who, several years later, made revelations about this rumor. “The worst thing is that this rumor was an idea of Claude Carrère, my producer, to sell paper”, swung the septuagenarian to our colleagues. “I didn’t know at the time that he was involved in this story. I didn’t know until much later.”
Corridor noises, launched by the producer and his impresario, which greatly affected the ex-wife of the late Lionel Leroy. “This guy to whom I brought fortunes broke my life for years”, before tackling his ex-mentor. “I also blame him for having deprived me of the stage for more than twenty years…”.
Invited to the program C à vous, this January 4 on France 5, Sheila provided other details on her professional relationship with the producer. “Me, I don’t spit in the soup, but let’s say that humanly, he was toxic yes. He hurt me”, affirms the ex-candidate of Dancing with the stars and Mask Singer. “We both grew up. He was someone who was very inventive, who created merchandising, a lot of things compared to what the job is today”.
However, the famous variety artist has never forgiven the attitude of the producer towards her. “Afterwards, he was someone who only thought about business”. In front of the presenter Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine, who also recalls that this rumor launched by her former mentor “with the complicity of Gerard de Villiers”, having made the front page of the newspaper France Dimanche, Sheila also reviewed the images of a passage of the Everybody talks about it with Thierry Ardisson on France 2, where presenter Jean-Pierre Foucault (guest on the show) defended the singer.
“It made me happy”, she smiled after the broadcast of the extract, adding nevertheless. “At first, you might take it as a joke, but for me, it followed me for 40 years. So, I think you always have to be careful…”. A testimony to review in the excerpt above, before finding Sheila, in honor of a documentary broadcast this Friday, January 6 on France 3.
