Eileen Atkins

Born: June 16 1934
Where: Clapton, London, UK

The versatile actress has impressed in a variety of films ranging from the lame action caper The Avengers to the country house thriller Gosford Park.

However, she is best known for her stage work, including award-winning appearances in The Unexpected Man and Honour in London's West End and The Killing of Sister George on Broadway.

Atkins is also credited with creating - along with Jean Marsh - the long-running TV series Upstairs Downstairs.

The daughter of a gas man and barmaid, Atkins was born in a Salvation Army Women's Hostel in north London.

She began performing as a tap dancer in working men's clubs at the age of seven, and she had done professional pantomime by the time she was 13.

With the encouragement of a teacher - who gave Atkins voice lessons to remove her Cockney accent and introduced her to Shakespeare - she went on to attend the Guildhall School of Drama.

She got her first break when she moved to Stratford with her then-husband, Julian Glover, who had found work with the RSC.

Atkins got her start in Stratford as an usherette and she gradually moved up until she was allowed into the company.

She first performed on the Stratford stage as Audrey in As You Like It, chosen to fill in for the understudy of Dame Peggy Ashcroft after both had taken ill.

Atkins spent several years with the RSC, performing in both classical and contemporary plays alongside the likes of Lawrence Olivier and Alec Guinness.

On the London stage, she portrayed numerous characters, earning a Best Supporting Actress Olivier Award for her performance in Peter Hall's production of-The Winter's Tale.

Her one-woman show, A Room of One's Own, was an international success, earning Atkins a Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance and a special Citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf.

She made her small screen debut in 1959 in Hilda Lessways and went on to appear in Z-Cars before making her big screen debut in 1968 in the film adaptation of John Osborne's Inadmissable Evidence.

TV work followed before she landed a role in the 1975 horror film I Don't Want To Be Born followed by Sidney Lumet's Equus alongside Richard Burton.

Subsequent work centred on TV and the stage but she did star with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay in The Dresser in 1983.

In 1991, she played Lilian Bennet in the drama Let Him Have It and starred alongside Jack Nicholson in the horror-thriller Wolf in 1994.

She starred with Richard E Grant in the rom-com Jack & Sarah in 1995 and also appeared in the disappointing big screen version of The Avengers in 1998.

She had a cameo role in The Hours in 2002 which she followed with the comedy drama What A Girl Wants and Anthony Minghella's American civil war drama Cold Mountain the following year.

She was married to Julian Glover from 1957 to 1966 but they were later divorced. She has been married to her current husband, Bill Shepherd, since 2 February 1978. She has no children.

Recent work includes the drama Ask The Dust (reports claimed that co-star Colin Farrell begged the 70-year-old actress for sex during filming).

In 2006, she starred in an ensemble cast in the romantic drama Scenes of a Sexual Nature.