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).

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.

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).

Her mother, Annie Ellen (née Elkins), was a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and her father, Thomas Arthur Atkins,[3] was a gas meter reader who was previously under-chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador.

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.

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".

[4] During the war, she performed as well at London's Stage Door canteen for American troops and sang songs like "Yankee Doodle."

Eileen Atkins has since publicly credited the Principal, Miss Dorothy Margaret Hall, for the wise and firm guidance under which her character developed.

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.

[9][10] Atkins joined the Guild Players Repertory Company in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, as a professional actress in 1952.

[11] In 1953 she appeared as an attendant in Love's Labours Lost at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

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 appeared as Maggie Clayhanger in all six episodes of Arnold Bennett's Hilda Lessways from 15 May to 19 June 1959, produced by BBC Midlands with Judi Dench and Brian Smith.

Marsh played maid Rose for the duration of the series but Atkins was unable to accept a part because of stage commitments.

Atkins' film and television work includes appearing as Dornford Yates' villainess Vanity Fair in the BBC adaptation of She Fell Among Thieves (1978), Sons and Lovers (1981), Smiley's People (1982), Oliver Twist (1982), Titus Andronicus (1985), A Better Class of Person (1985), Roman Holiday (1987), The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Talking Heads (1998), Madame Bovary (2000), David Copperfield (2000), Wit (2001) and Bertie and Elizabeth (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), What a Girl Wants (2003), Vanity Fair (2004), Ballet Shoes (2005) and Ask the Dust (2006).

In the autumn of 2007, Atkins co-starred with Dame Judi Dench and Sir Michael Gambon in the BBC One drama Cranford playing the central role of Miss Deborah Jenkyns.

Atkins replaced Vanessa Redgrave as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the blockbuster movie Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe, which was released in the UK in May 2010.

Atkins and Jean Marsh, creators of the original 1970s series of Upstairs, Downstairs, were among the cast of a new BBC adaptation, shown over the winter of 2010–11.

[16] In September 2011, Atkins joined the cast of ITV comedy-drama series Doc Martin playing the title character's aunt, Ruth Ellingham.

Atkins starred as Lady Spence with Matthew Rhys in an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat, shown in September 2012.

[21] Atkins portrayed graduate school professor Evelyn Ashford to Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) in Wit, a 2001 American television movie directed by Mike Nichols.

The teleplay by Nichols and Emma Thompson is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same title by Margaret Edson.

Atkins had a guest role in BBC Radio 4's long-running rural soap The Archers in September 2016, playing Jacqui, the juror who persuades her fellow jurors to acquit Helen Titchener (née Archer) of the charge of attempted murder and wounding with intent of her abusive husband, Rob.

I felt terrible the other night because I bumped into Greta Scacchi and she asked me if I was coming to see her in The Deep Blue Sea.