Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins is an actor, born 1934.
Eileen Atkins has worked in theatre, film and television without a break since 1953, which makes her career older than most of the institutions that now give her awards. The stage is where the largest of them sit: three Olivier Awards, for a supporting performance in 1988 and for Best Actress in The Unexpected Man (1999) and Honour (2004). Screen recognition arrived late and all at once, in 2008, when Cranford brought her both the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress and the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. She was made CBE in 1990 and Dame Commander in 2001.
On screen she is usually the person telling the truth in a room that would rather she did not. Mrs. Croft in Gosford Park (2001), Maddy in Cold Mountain, Miss Matilda Crawley in Vanity Fair, Judith Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm, Madge in The Dresser (1983), Madame Ostrakova in Smiley's People. She plays authority without warmth and warmth without softness, and in the whole list she is never once cute.
She also writes, and this is the part of her career that gets the least attention while arguably having built the most: the catalog credits her as a creator of both Upstairs Downstairs (1971) and The House of Eliott (1991).
The recent work has been mostly cameo-scale and mostly excellent, Madame Kozlova in Paddington 2, Aunt Vanessa in Magic in the Moonlight, Mabel in Wicked Little Letters (2024), with Ruth Ellingham in Doc Martin as the nearest thing to a long-running screen role she has agreed to.
Movies (30)
- Paddington 2 (2017)
- Cold Mountain (2003)
- Robin Hood (2010)
- Beautiful Creatures (2013)
- The Hours (2002)
- What a Girl Wants (2003)
- Wolf (1994)
- Gosford Park (2001)
- The Avengers (1998)
- Wicked Little Letters (2024)
- Bunker
- Ask the Dust (2006)
- Last Chance Harvey (2008)
- Wild Target (2010)
- Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
- Vanity Fair (2004)
- The Vision (1987)
- Evening (2007)
- Ballet Shoes (2008)
- Wit (2001)
- Jack & Sarah (1995)
- The Scapegoat (2012)
- Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
- Oliver Twist (1982)
- Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006)
- The Dresser (1983)
- A Hazard of Hearts (1987)
- Equus (1977)
- Nothing Like a Dame (2018)
- Let Him Have It (1991)
TV (13)
- Screen Two (1985)
- BBC Play of the Month (1965)
- Doc Martin (2004)
- The Wednesday Play (1964)
- Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)
- Remembers… (2022)
- The House of Eliott (1991)
- Cranford (2007)
- BBC2 Play of the Week (1977)
- The Modern World: Ten Great Writers (1988)
- A Dance to the Music of Time (1997)
- Upstairs Downstairs (2010)
- Smiley's People (1982)
Books (1)
Where to start with Eileen Atkins
Two hours and one film: make it Gosford Park. Atkins is not in much of it and you will remember every line she has, which is the entire case for her as a screen actor.
For the award-winning work go to Cranford, which is the reason she has an Emmy and a BAFTA from the same year and is also the gentlest thing here. Wit is the hardest watch here and the best of the lot. The Dresser is the theatre-adjacent one and worth it, Cold Comfort Farm is the funniest thing she has done, and Smiley's People is for anyone who thinks she only plays grandes dames.
Modern viewers usually meet her in Paddington 2, which is a fine time. Then find Upstairs, Downstairs, which she is credited with creating and which invented a whole shelf of British television.