Eileen Atkins

Dame Eileen June Atkins, (born 16 June 1934), is an English actress and occasional screenwriter. She has worked in the theatre, film, and television consistently since 1953. In 2008, she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for '' Cranford''. She is also a three-time Olivier Award winner, winning Best Supporting Performance in 1988 (for Multiple roles) and Best Actress for ''The Unexpected Man'' (1999) and ''Honour'' (2004). She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1990 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001.

Atkins joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1957 and made her Broadway debut in the 1966 production of ''The Killing of Sister George'', for which she received the first of four Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Play in 1967. She received subsequent nominations for, '' Vivat! Vivat Regina!'' (1972), ''Indiscretions'' (1995) and ''The Retreat from Moscow'' (2004). Other stage credits include ''The Tempest'' (Old Vic 1962), ''Exit the King'' (Edinburgh Festival and Royal Court 1963), ''The Promise'' (New York 1967), ''The Night of the Tribades'' (New York 1977), ''Medea'' (Young Vic 1985), '' A Delicate Balance'' (Haymarket, West End 1997) and ''Doubt'' (New York 2006).

Atkins co-created the television dramas '' Upstairs, Downstairs'' (1971–1975) and '' The House of Elliot'' (1991–1994) with Jean Marsh. She also wrote the screenplay for the 1997 film ''Mrs Dalloway''. Her film appearances include ''I Don't Want to Be Born'' (1975), '' Equus'' (1977), ''The Dresser'' (1983), ''Let Him Have It'' (1991), ''Wolf'' (1994), ''Jack and Sarah'' (1995), ''Gosford Park'' (2001), '' Cold Mountain'' (2003), '' Vanity Fair'' (2004), ''Scenes of a Sexual Nature'' (2006), ''Evening'' (2007), ''Last Chance Harvey'' (2008), ''Robin Hood'' (2010) and ''Magic in the Moonlight'' (2014).

Early life

Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Lower Clapton, a Salvation Army maternity hospital in East London. Her mother, Annie Ellen (née Elkins), was a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and her father, Arthur Thomas Atkins, was a gas meter reader who was previously under- chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador. She was the third child in the family and when she was born the family moved to a council home in Tottenham. Her father did not, in fact, know how to drive and was responsible, as under-chauffeur, mainly for cleaning the car. At the time Eileen was born, her mother worked in a factory the whole day and then as a barmaid in the Elephant & Castle at night. When Eileen was three, a Gypsy woman came to their door selling lucky heather and clothes pegs. She saw little Eileen and told her mother that her daughter would be a famous dancer. Her mother promptly enrolled her in a dance class. Although she hated it, she studied dancing from age 3 to 15 or 16. From age 7 to 15, which covered the last four years of the Second World War (1941–45), she danced in working men's club circuits for 15 shillings a time as "Baby Eileen". During the war, she performed as well at London's Stage Door canteen for American troops and sang songs like "Yankee Doodle." At one time she was attending dance class four or five times a week.

Once, when she was given a line to recite, someone told her mother that she had a Cockney accent. Her mother was appalled but speech lessons were too expensive for the family. Fortunately, a woman took interest in her and paid for her to be educated at Parkside Preparatory School in Tottenham. Eileen Atkins has since publicly credited the Principal, Miss Dorothy Margaret Hall, for the wise and firm guidance under which her character developed. From Parkside she went on to The Latymer School, a grammar school in Edmonton, London. By 12, she was a professional in panto in Clapham and Kilburn. One of her grammar school teachers who used to give them religious instruction, an Ernest J. Burton, spotted her potential and, without charge, rigorously drilled away her Cockney accent. He also introduced her to the works of William Shakespeare. She studied under him for two years.

When she was 14 or 15 and still at Latymer's, she also attended "drama demonstration" sessions twice a year with this same teacher. At around this time (though some sources say she was 12), her first encounter with Robert Atkins took place. She was taken to see Atkins' production of ''King John'' at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. She wrote to him saying that the boy who played Prince Arthur was not good enough and that she could do better. Atkins wrote back and asked that she come to see him. On the day they met, Atkins thought she was a shop girl and not a school girl. She gave a little prince speech and he told her to go to drama school and come back when she was older.

Burton came to an agreement with Eileen's parents that he would try to get her a scholarship for one drama school and that if she did not get the scholarship he would arrange for her to do a teaching course in some other drama school. Her parents were not at all keen on the fact that she would stay in school until 16 as her sister had left at 14 and her brother at 15 but somehow they were persuaded. Eileen was in Latymer's until 16. Out of 300 applicants for a RADA scholarship, she got down to the last three but was not selected, so she did a three-year course on teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. But, although she was taking the teaching course, she also attended drama classes and in fact performed in three plays in her last year. This was in the early 1950s. In her third and last year she had to teach once a week, an experience she later said she hated. She graduated from Guildhall in 1953.

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

It took nine years (1953–62) before she was working steadily.

Stage

She joined the Guild Players Repertory Company in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, as a professional actress in 1952. She appeared as the nurse in ''Harvey'' at the Repertory Theatre, Bangor, in 1952. In 1953 she appeared as an attendant in ''Love's Labours Lost'' at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Her London stage debut was in 1953 as Jaquenetta in Robert Atkins's staging of '' Love's Labour's Lost'' at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park.

Atkins has regularly returned to the life and work of Virginia Woolf for professional inspiration. She has played the writer on stage in Patrick Garland's adaptation of ''A Room of One's Own'' and also in ''Vita and Virginia'', winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show and an Obie Award for A Room of One's Own in which she also played in the 1990 television version; she also provided the screenplay for the 1997 film adaptation of Woolf's novel ''Mrs. Dalloway'', and made a cameo appearance in the 2002 film version of Michael Cunningham's Woolf-themed novel, '' The Hours''.

Atkins joined the Stratford Memorial Theatre Company in 1957 and stayed for two seasons. She was with the Old Vic in its 1961–62 season (she appeared in the Old Vic's Repertoire Leaflets of February–April 1962 and April–May 1962).

Film and television

She appeared as Maggie Clayhanger in all six episodes of Arnold Bennett's ''Hilda Lessways'' from 15 May to 19 June 1959, produced by BBC
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