Eileen Atkins

At 90 years old, Eileen Atkins has this physical status:

Dame Eileen June Atkins, (born 16 June 1934), is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.

She has been working in theatre, film, and television programming since 1953.

In 2008, she received the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Cranford Miniseries or Movie.

She has also received the Best Supporting Performance Award in 1988 (for Multiple roles) and Best Actress for The Unexpected Man (1999) and Honour (2004), which was also a three-time Olivier Award winner.

In 1990, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001. Atkins debuted with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1957 and made her Broadway debut in The Killing of Sister George, which earned her first of four Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Play in 1967.

Vivat Regina!

The Tempest (Old Vic 1962), Exit the King (Edinburgh Festival and Royal Court 1963), The Promise (New York 1967), A Delicate Balance (Haymarket, West End 1997) and Doubt (New York 2006). Atkins co-created the television dramas Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–75), and The House of Elliot (1991–93) with Jean Marsh.

Mrs Dalloway, a 1997 film, was also written on the screenplay.

Equus (1977), The Dresser (1983), Let Him Have It (1991), Wolf (1994), Jack and Sarah (1995), Evening (2005), and Magic in the Moonlight (2014).

Early life

Atkins was born in a Salvation Army maternity hospital in East London, Lower Clapton. Annie Ellen (née Elkins), a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and Arthur Thomas Atkins, her father, was a gasmeter reader who was previously underchauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador. She was the third child in the family's family and when she was born, the family moved to a council house in Tottenham. Her father did not know how to drive and was in fact responsible for the car's maintenance, mainly for the vacuuming. Eileen was born in a factory the entire day and then as a barmaid in the Elephant & Castle at night. A Gypsy woman appeared at their door when Eileen was three years old, selling lucky heather and clothing pegs. She remembered little Eileen and told her mother that her daughter would be a well-known dancer. Her mother took her daughter to a dance class right away. Though she looted it, she continued to dance from age 3 to 16, or 16. She competed in working men's club circuits from age 7 to 15, covering the last four years of the Second World War (1941-1945-1945). During the war, she did well at London's Stage Door canteen for American troops, and performed hits such as "Yankee Doodle." At one time, she was going to dance class four to five times a week.

Someone told her mother that she had a Cockney accent even before she was given a chance to recite. Her mother was empowered, but language lessons were too costly for the family. Fortunately, a woman expressed concern for her welfare and paid for her to be educated at Parkside Preparatory School in Tottenham. Miss Dorothy Hall, the Principal, has since been praised for the sage and firm guidance under which her character was born, Eileen Atkins has since praised her. She went from Parkside to The Latymer School, a grammar school in Edmonton, London. She was a panto expert in Clapham and Kilburn by 12. An Ernest J. Burton, one of her grammar school teachers who used to give them religious instruction, spotted her potential and patiently drilled away her Cockney accent without charge. William Shakespeare's daughter was also introduced to the William Shakespeare's works. She worked with him for two years.

She attended "drama demonstration" sessions twice a year with this same tutor whether she was 14 or 15. She was also at Latymer's when she was 14 or 15 years old. Robert Atkins' first meeting about this time (though some reports say she was 12 years old), she was in fact her first encounter with him. Atkins' production of King John at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, she was taken to see her at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. She wrote to him, saying that the boy who played Prince Arthur was not strong enough and that she should do better. Atkins wrote back, asking that she come to see him. Atkins regarded her as a shop girl rather than a school girl on the day they met. She gave her a little prince address and he told her to go to drama school and come back when she was grown up.

Burton came to an understanding with Eileen's parents that if she did not win the scholarship, he'll try to get her a scholarship for one drama school and that if she didn't, he'd arrange for her to attend a teaching course in some other drama school. Her parents were not positive that she would stay in school until 16 because her sister had left at 14 and her brother was 15 years old, but they were perplexed. Eileen was in Latymer's until 16. She qualified for a RADA scholarship but was not chosen, so she took a three-year course in teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. However, although she was enrolled in the teaching profession, she did take drama lessons and appeared in three plays in her last year. This was in the early 1950s. She had to teach once a week in her third and last year, an event she later regretted. She graduated from Guildhall in 1953.

As soon as she left Guildhall, she became a member of Robert Atkins in 1953: as Jaquenetta in Love's Labour's Lost, the same Regent's Park Open Air Theatre where she was first introduced to Atkins' King John production years before. She was also an assistant stage manager at the Oxford Playhouse for a short time until Peter Hall fired her for impudence. She was also a member of repertory companies operating in Billy Butlin's holiday camp in Skegness, Lincolnshire. It was there when she first met Julian Glover.

Before she was working steadily, it took nine years (1953–62).

Personal life

In 1957, Atkins married actress Julian Glover; they divorced in 1966. Isla Blair, a former star of Glover, married Isla Blair the day after his divorce.) Bill Shepherd, her second husband, was married on February 2nd, 1978. Shepherd died on June 24, 2016.

She wrote the screenplay for Mrs Dalloway, starring Vanessa Redgrave in 1997. The film received rave reviews, but it was not a box-office disappointment. Atkins and her partner, who had invested in it, suffered financially. "I have to work," she said of the incident. Mrs Dalloway's death had almost bankrupted me, and if you are barely bankrupted, you will be in danger for the remainder of your life. I don't have a pension. In any case, it doesn't hurt that I work. It's actually very good."

"I have tried to do new jobs throughout my career, but as far as new work is concerned, there is a problem in the West End." I get bored with seeing the same old plays performed again and again as a theatregoer. The other night, I felt terrible because I was bumped into Greta Scacchi and she asked me if I was going to see her in The Deep Blue Sea. 'Greta, I'm so old, I've seen it so many times,' I said. With Peggy Ashcroft, Vivien Leigh, with Googie Withers, Penelope Wilton, and myself when I was 19 years old, I've seen it. I can't bring myself to see it again.' She was so sweet about it."

Atkins was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995 and treated for the disease. She has recovered. Atkins (at the age of 87) completed her autobiography What Does She Do? living alone in widowhood during the COVID lockdown. On BBC Radio 4, she read an abridged version.

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