Eileen Atkins Biography

Eileen hails from England, her real names are Dame Eileen June. Atkins is a theater, film, and TV actress, and occasional screenwriter.

How old is Eileen Atkins?

She was born on 16th June 1934 in Lower Clapton. Atkins is 87 years old as of 16th June 2021.

Eileen Atkins Family

She is the third born child to Annie Ellen (née Elkins), a former factory servant and a night barmaid in the Elephant & Castle, and Arthur Thomas Atkins, who was a former gas meter reader previously under-chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador.

Eileen Atkins Husband

She is a widow and had two marriages. She first married to actor Julian Glover. They married in 1957 and separated in 1966. She afterwards married Bill Shepherd, the two married on 2nd February 1978. They remained married until Shepherd’s death on 24th June 2016.

Eileen Atkins Career

Originating from Bangor, Northern Ireland, Atkins was trained at the Guild Players Repertory Company as an actress. Come 1953, in Robert Atkins’s staging of Love’s Labour’s Lost, she appeared for the first time on stage in London. In A Room of One’s Own, she acted Virginia Woolf on stage, and in Vita and Virginia. Atkins came up with the script for the 1997 movie adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Woolf. She assisted create the idea for Upstairs, Downstairs, the ITV series. Sons and Lovers, Oliver Twist, What a Girl Wants, and Talking Heads are part and parcel of her film and TV work.

Come 2007, she co-starred in the BBC One drama Cranford with Judi Dench, acting Miss Deborah Jenkyns. In the BBC Two black comedy, Psychoville, Atkins acted the wicked nurse Edwina Kenchington in 2009. In Robin Hood, the hit movie featuring Russell Crowe, she came in place of Vanessa Redgrave as Eleanor of Aquitaine. Among the cast of a recent BBC adaptation, seen during the winter of 2010-11, were Atkins and Jean Marsh, craters of the original 1970s series of Upstairs, Downstairs. Twice, in the 2002 TV movie Bertie and Elizabeth and in the 2016 Netflix-produced TV series The Crown, she acted Queen Mary.

Eileen Atkins The Crown

She featured as Queen Mary, the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II and mother of King George VI in a historical drama TV series The Crown.

Eileen Atkins Doc Martin

She acted as Ruth Ellingham, a retired psychiatrist and Martin’s aunt in the British TV medical comedy-drama series Doc Martin.

Eileen Atkins Movies

•  2018 Nothing Like a Dame
• 2017 Paddington 2
•  2014 Magic in the Moonlight
•  2013 Beautiful Creatures
•  2012 The Scapegoat
•  2010 Robin Hood
•  2010 Wild Target
•  2008 Last Chance Harvey
•  2007 Evening
•  2006 Ask the Dust
•  2006 Scenes of a Sexual Nature
•  2005 The Feast of the Goat

Eileen Atkins TV Shows

•  2017 Carnage
• 2016 The Crown
•  2014 This is Jinsy
•  2011–2019 Doc Martin
•  2010 Upstairs Downstairs
•  2010 Agatha Christie’s Poirot
•  2010 Rosamunde Pilcher’s Shades of Love
•  2009–2011 Psychoville
•  2007 Cranford
•  2007 Agatha Christie’s Marple
•  2007 Waking the Dead
•  2007 Ballet Shoes