Her dark materials

Mary Wakefield talks to Eileen Atkins about acting as an out-of-body experience. Eileen Atkins opens in The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 23 January.

The Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There I am in her elegant, airy sitting room overlooking the Thames, surrounded by books and paintings, watching swans shimmy by outside. There I am stroking a cat, listening to Dame Eileen, and just becoming dimly aware that this is not going to be a very run-of-the-mill conversation.

In fact, it’s more like having a tiny part in a small but lively play — which, when your leading lady is the star of Cranford, and one of Britain’s three great Dames (Judi and Maggie being the others), is no mean thrill. I ask a question, Atkins considers it, her elegant legs crossed, head on one side, then she begins her answer, which leads seamlessly into an anecdote, then a confession, followed by a joke, perhaps a jig and then 20 minutes later we pause, look around and see where we’ve ended up. After question one, for instance, it’s in her downstairs loo.

Here’s how: what is your first childhood memory? I ask. Atkins says, ‘It’s a very nice one actually, of my father chucking me up in the air and catching me again. It was in Stoke Newington, because we lived on a council estate there. We were a very working-class family — the genuine article! [cockney accent] Anyway, my mother forced my father to marry her. His wife had died in childbirth, you see, leaving him with a young child of three, and he was desperate for help, so he asked my mother if she’d care for the child and she said, “Only if yer marry me!” I can see her point.