Honored actress of the British theater Eileen June Atkins was born on June 16, 1934 in London in the family of a small employee of the gas company and a barmaid. A native of London’s East End, she has performed as a dancer in work clubs since the age of seven. As she got older, she began taking pantomime lessons, participated in school plays, and with the help of her school teacher, developed correct pronunciation, getting rid of the common folk Cockney accent. She continued her acting education at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. First appearing on the stage as a statistician in Shakespeare's play "The Fruitful Effort of Love" in 1953, she could not get any noticeable role for a long time. In 1957, she followed her first husband, actor Julian Glover, to Stradfod, where he landed a job at Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. At first, she worked in the theater as a ticketer, and only then was accepted into the troupe.
Late, in the London Old Vic, she played Lady Anna in Richard III, Viola in Twelfth Night, Miranda in The Tempest, was busy in the modern repertoire, played with Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and other famous actors. Her first major success came in 1965, after she played a lesbian named Alice Childie in Frank Marcus’s play To Kill Sister Georgie. In the same role, she made her Broadway debut in October 1966 and was soon nominated for the American Tony Theatre Award. Later, she played many leading roles on the stage: Queen Elizabeth in Vivat! Vivat, Queen! Robert Bolt, Susanna in "Susanne Andler" Marguerite Duras, Joan of Arc in "Saint Jeanne" Bernard Shaw, Medea in "Medea" Euripides and many others.
In the sixties, Atkins began to act in film and television. After appearing in several films and television versions of theatrical plays, she, along with her friend, actress Jean Marsh, invented and co-created the popular TV series Up and Down, about the life of an aristocratic London family and their servants, which ran on British television from 1971 to 1975. Unlike Marsh, Atkins did not play in this series, content with the role of the author of the idea. Twenty years later, Marsh and Atkins rejoined their creative efforts, inventing a new television project, The Eliott House (1991-1994), the story of the lives of two sisters in London in the twenties and thirties. Her film career developed quite smoothly: she starred in many films, including such as Equius (1977, Sidney Lumet), Costume (1983, Peter Yates), So He Needs It (1991, Peter Medack), Jack and Sarah (1995, Tim Sullivan), The Cozy Farm (1995, John Schlesinger). In 1985, for the role of Madge in Costume, she was nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Award as the best supporting actress. In general, the main sphere of her work has always been the theater: her solo performance “Own room” (1989), in which the actress played the writer Virginia Woolf, was very well received in the UK and in the United States. The success of this performance inspired Atkins to create the play "Vita and Virginia" (1993), based on the correspondence of Virginia Woolf, in which she again played the famous writer, and her friend Vita Sackville-West - actress Vanessa Redgrave.
A few years later, Atkins acted as a screenwriter, adapting for the film Wolfe novel "Mrs. Dalloway", which was directed by Marlene Gorris, and was awarded the "Ivnig Standard" award for best screenplay. In 2001, she was awarded the title of nobility. Over the past years, the actress has appeared in films quite often, appearing mainly in supporting roles: the cook Mrs. Croft in Gosford Park (2001, dir. Robert Altman), caring for the hopelessly ill nurse Ashford in Epilogue (2001, dir. Michael Nichols), sharp-tongued aunt Matilda Crowley in Vanity Fair (2004, dir. Mira Nair). Eileen Atkins is still one of the leading actresses of the British theater, playing both in her homeland and in the United States. Among her many theatrical awards are the Laurence Olivier Award, the American "Desk Drama Award" and several nominations for the Broadway Tony Award.
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