Y.You know right away that you’re going to go with Dame Ellen Atkins. “Oh my God,” she says, whispering at one point, as we sit, “we have the greatest man in the world.” He sweats when our neighbor orders wine. “We know he’s in the right school and he always commands the servants. I really try not to take those voices against automatically,” she says in a loud voice. “But it’s very difficult, isn’t it?”
Atkins, Ft. 87 – At one point she knelt down to get her bag out of the seat – she rarely eats in London these days, but she came here to follow Jesus. That’s Jesus Adorno, the 39-year-old director of Le Caprice in Mayfair, who now oversees the restaurant: Charlie at Brown’s Hotel. In hints, Jesus works in a mysterious way and takes us to a quiet place. “I encouraged a friend to come here,” says Atkins, while we were camping, and she said the food was good, “but Elin, I don’t know how you can sit down and eat with that wallpaper.”
We study the birds of paradise decoration, and then the menu. “My GP repeatedly tells me I have to have liver, so I do it,” she decides.
She is happy to be out because it has been a sad week for her. The day before, the old Vic Theater was finally canceled 4000 miles, The play Atkins was to act opposite Timothy Chalmet. They had a reason to open a fortnight after the first lockdown; Since then, Chalmet’s star has grown and he can’t find the time to do it.
Atkins says: “I don’t believe there will be another drama for a 91-year-old woman with such a role. “They couldn’t find an alternative to Timmy. So that’s it. “
She shines with the arrival of the asparagus – “Oh, how nice!” – And then back to her theme. The pain was that she had finally learned her lines, difficult for him these days. For the first six months of the epidemic she read the opposite part to an actor every week, to continue it, but with great delay she accepted.
The only saving grace, she says, gave her the opportunity to write a long-awaited memoir. The book traces her early years growing up in a council house in Tottenham, and how her mother put her on stage as a tap dancer in men’s clubs working as “Baby Eileen”. It ends with the fall of her first marriage (Julian Glover) and the transfer of her first big hit, Sister George murdered, Broadway; Star years later. “If I publish volume two, I must either die or be ready to leave the country,” she says.
She opened her book with a scene defining her life. She portrays herself as a 19-year-old woman sitting at a table with her baby looking out of a window and feeling her home always among her peers.
“It simply came to my notice then that I made that choice,” she says. “Of course, I was a little sad and that’s what I’m missing in the family, and it’s very clear now because everyone has grandchildren. But I’m sure I made the right choice.”
The book contains an unforgettable scene in which she and Glover decide to adopt a child. A woman with a baby knocks on the door, and Atkins holds two thoughts: First, the baby was brought for her. The second was that he could not accept it in any way. “If I ever thought the world was saying something to me, it was.”
Was that feeling a reaction against his own family? “Yes. It wasn’t a happy family so why would I want to rebuild it? I talk to my brother more now than ever before. He will say, ‘Well, you complain about tap dancing, but you always look so happy.’ The fact is, I have no choice. “
Is she hurt? “It’s a very strong word. But it alerts me to child actors. I feel very hot under the collar when they come. Britain has talent. “
He does not attack me as a person in dire need of treatment. “My friends may disagree,” she says. “I went for a therapy session when my second husband died in 2016. I was very sad, and I talked to this guy through it all. And finally, he said, ‘Yeah, life is nonsense, isn’t it?’ I thought, ‘Well, I won’t pay you to tell me that.’
She is able to work through problems in theater. “There’s usually something buried there,” she says. “And once you get it out of yourself and play it, you’re free of it.”
I don’t know how many catheters there are Dr. Martin, The long-running ITV series in which Atkins plays Martin Clooney’s blunt aunt. She is coming to Cornwall the day after we met for four months to film a new series. Part of her fears it; The part that wants to be home with its two cats by the river in west London.
“When I think about work, it’s the theater that really makes me happy,” she says. “It simply came to our notice then Dr. Martin Is it like being part of a repertoire company, all together? They give me this bungalow from where you can see the whole of Port Isaac … Half the town hates us.
If Atkins imagined old age, it was like a long gossip phone call. She wonders how many of her friends are just texting. He does not use the Internet. “One or two people tell me not to do this, because I’m already very angry,” she says. “A young woman I know calls me from time to time; Apparently on the internet she calls me Dame and repeats what I said, for the word.
I wonder if all these years she has been tired of her surrogate dramatic families. “Never,” she says. “It simply came to our notice then Cranford. We couldn’t read for the first time because we all laughed a lot. Judy [Dench] I used to bring cake every morning. I deny that I have sweet teeth. And one day I heard her say, ‘Don’t make an offer to Eileen, she doesn’t have sweet teeth.’ She heard a little cross and Judy never crosses. I said to myself, ‘Eileen, does it hurt you to accept Judy’s cake one day?’ So the next time they came around I took a piece. And it was amazing! Now every year on my birthday I have the same cake. Judy has the gift of bringing people together.
Although they were all exactly the same age, Maggie Smith, Dench and Atkins, she says they were never jealous of each other. “Anyway, I was looking for smaller parts to start with, and Judy was Juliet at Stratford. It was a bit more competitive with Maggie because we both became assistant stage managers at the Oxford Playhouse at the same time. But then, out of the blue, I thought: ‘Maggie?’ But then I went to see him and flew away.
Rounding out a cup of hot water with “that old lady’s habit” she has finished her lunch so far.
I read something Patron Critic Michael Billington once wrote about him. Vanessa Redgrave seems to have reached another world. Judy Dench can produce laughter and tears at the same time.
“I cry now,” she says, unexpectedly, and she cries a little. “It makes me feel like I gave up what I wanted to do when I was 12 and I want to be an actress.”
I apologize for setting him up, because he dries his eyes. “I’m a little emotional because of yesterday and the drama,” she says. “I have a feeling that I may be finished now. It may be.”
Oh, something else will happen, I suggest. “Maybe,” she says, brightly. “I mean, Ian [McKellen] Hamlet is playing at 83. You don’t want me to do that. But I think that means hope for all of us. ”
Does he An act of life on stage by Eileen Atkins is out on paperback (Virago, £ 9.99). To support parents and supervisors, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery may be charged