Back With Doc Martin EILEEN ATKINS Talks To Us
The immensely talented Dame Eileen Atkins is one of our most revered actresses, with a BAFTA, an Olivier and an Emmy to her name. As Doc Martin returns to our TV screens, Eileen shares her love of acting with Richard Barber
‘Does acting define me? Yes, I would say it does’
When she was offered the role of Doc Martin’s psychiatrist aunt, Ruth Ellingham, Eileen Atkins had a confession to make. ‘I’d never watched the show. So they sent me a box set and my husband and I settled down to sample an episode.
‘As it turned out, we watched three in a row. I found it enchanting. Why on earth hadn’t we watched it before? So I said it would be lovely to do eight episodes. And here we are, 32 episodes later…
‘We won’t film what may be the final series until the year after next. So there’s a 20-month gap, which means you don’t feel as if you’re in a soap. And it keeps you fresh for when we return in spring 2019.’
And will that be it? ‘Each time, they say the next one will be the last. But it’s very popular – in America, too – so we’ll see.’
There’s another reason she likes the gappy schedule. ‘I’ve always thought it bad for an actor to be too readily identified with a particular role. It’s why I refused to appear in Upstairs, Downstairs in the 70s. Jean [Marsh] and I had written it and she of course played Rose throughout. But I thought it might limit any other work I wanted to do.
‘But it suits me at my age to be in a relatively small part in a series like Doc Martin. It also represents my pension. Two or three elderly actresses I know have said to me how much they’d love a role like Ruth.’
Eileen played the formidable Miss Deborah Jenkyns in the BBC period drama Cranford. ‘I loved that role and was very sad when she was killed off in the first series. But I’ve quite deliberately never been in an ongoing series. Until now.
‘Ruth has a bit of edge – I alone am allowed to stand up to Martin. I’m also one of the few characters – Martin’s wife, Louisa [Caroline Catz], is another – who isn’t mad. It’s a very well-written show full of first-rate actors. Nobody is just playing themselves. This is popular TV at its best.’
After filming finished on the last series in 2015, Eileen went to work on her one-woman show about legendary Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry. After that, her husband, Bill, became very ill, so she took a year off to be with him. Sadly, Bill died in June 2016.
‘I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew he was terminally ill. I tried my best to put on a cheerful face. By the end, though, he knew he wasn’t going to get better.’
Work has been a great solace since Bill’s death. ‘But then, it’s been pretty much paramount in my life for so long now. Does it define me? Yes, I’d say it does,’ says Eileen, who became a Dame on her 67th birthday in 2001. ‘And I never had children. In fact, it was only when I turned 80 that
I began to realise the point of grandchildren. I see other people with theirs and they seem quite sweet.’
But motherhood just didn’t pan out and nor is she complaining. Her first marriage, to actor Julian Glover, ended in divorce in her late twenties. She met second husband Bill Shepherd in her early forties. ‘I told him I was getting a bit old for motherhood and anyway I didn’t really want a child.’
Eileen makes no secret of the fact that acting was all she ever
wanted to do. ‘I’d never seen or heard of a play until I was 10. But then my visionary headmistress, Miss Hall, decided three other children and I should do a short play based on Little Women. I wanted to play Jo, but they made me play Amy because I had curls. I remember thinking, ‘I love this more than anything.’
‘Then, at grammar school, I was chosen to play the title role in Alice In
‘I was a terrible little show-off as a child’
Wonderland. I thought, “To hell with schoolwork.” All I wanted to do was act. It made me so happy. I was utterly single-minded.’
It’s one thing to have the ambition and the talent, but there are many talented people in the acting profession who don’t ever quite break through.
‘Oh yes, I know lots,’ says Eileen. ‘And it’s always been harder for women because fewer parts are written for them. But there’s no point moaning. Things are changing, albeit too slowly.’
Eileen, who turned 83 this year, claims her trim figure is down to her genes. ‘I’ve never been to a gym in my life, although I walk for miles in Cornwall. And I eat very healthily. I had a cancer scare 21 years ago, but it was caught early and it gave me a real sense of renewal.’
Despite a stellar career on stage and screen, Eileen has never written an autobiography. ‘I’ve been asked often but I’m not a good enough writer, although I’m all right with other people’s words. But mainly it’s because I’m such a horrible person. I was a terrible little show-off as a child. And I couldn’t tell the whole truth about my adult life as it would involve saying unkind things about other people.’
And that’s something the funny, forthright Dame Eileen Atkins is not prepared to do.
Doc Martin is on ITV at 9pm on Wednesday evenings until 8 November