Eileen Atkins

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Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE (born 16 June 1934) is an English actress and occasional screenwriter. Atkins was born in a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London (The Mothers' Hospital in Clapton), the cockney daughter of Annie Ellen (née Elkins), a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and Arthur Thomas Atkins, a gas-meter reader who was previously under-chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador. She attended the Latymer Grammar School, Edmonton and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her first stage appearance was at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 1953. She also appeared on-stage with Laurence Olivier, John Thaw and James Bolam in Semi-Detached (1962). Among her accomplishments are the creation of two television series - along with Jean Marsh she created the concept for an original television series, titled Behind the Green Baize Door, which became the award-winning ITV series Upstairs, Downstairs. The same team was also responsible for the BBC series The House of Eliott. As an actress her television work has included Three Sisters (1970), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1971), The Lady from the Sea (1974), Electra (1974), the villainess "Vanity Fair" in Dornford Yates' She Fell Among Thieves (1977), Sons and Lovers (1981), Oliver Twist (1982), Smiley's People (1982),Titus Andronicus (1985), The Burston Rebellion (1985), A Better Class of Person (1985), Roman Holiday (1987), The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Talking Heads (1998), Mad

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