Coronation Street actor Eileen Mayers known for controversial axed storyline has died

RIP

Equity magazine announced Mayers’ death on 21 October, confirming that she had died on 27 June 2026.

Mayers began her professional acting career as a teenager, taking to the stage at Oldham Repertory Theatre when she was just 15.

The tribute to the actress also remembered her time on the ITV soap, where she appeared as Sheila between 1960 and 1963.

“She took her final curtain call after an acting career which began aged 15 at the Oldham Repertory Theatre,” the notice read.

“Sheila Birtles in Coronation Street between 1960-63; she is now 'resting' for ever.”

The controversial plot was changed before it reached screens

Although Mayers spent only a few years in Weatherfield, her character became part of one of the programme’s most contentious storylines.

Sheila’s romantic hopes were dashed in 1963 when Neil Crossley rejected her, setting off a storyline in which she was supposed to experience a serious decline in her mental health. 

The writers had planned for Sheila to die after taking an overdose of pills, but news of the proposed ending emerged before the episode was broadcast.

The idea provoked backlash among viewers, some of whom contacted programme bosses to object. The reaction was strong enough for the storyline to be altered before it reached television screens.

In the episode that ultimately aired, Sheila was shown taking pills before the picture faded to black. Her eventual fate was left ambiguous, and she departed the soap later that year.

(Image source: ITV)

Mayers returned to Coronation Street on three further occasions, appearing again in 1966, 1969 and 1974.

‘I couldn’t believe it’

The unaired version of the scene remained unseen by the public until 2011, when ITV included it in the documentary The Corrie Years. 

By then, Mayers had long remembered the attention the storyline had attracted, describing the experience of leaving Granada Studios to find reporters waiting for her.

“I came out of Granada having finished and was greeted with a wall of journalists and I couldn't believe it,” she recalled.

Despite the publicity, she was disappointed that the scene she had filmed was never broadcast in its original form.

“It is disappointing when you think, 'Oh, that's it, that's good', and then it doesn't get shown but that's the way it is. I had an actress friend who used to say, 'Well dear, you've been front page news!', and I'd rather not have been, and that they had shown the episode.”