The Trials of Eileen Atkins: From L.A. Theater to ‘Let Him Have It’

Don’t expect to see Eileen Atkins performing onstage in Los Angeles again soon. She is still aghast over her less-than-spectacular recent engagement at the Westwood Playhouse in her acclaimed one-woman show, “A Room of One’s Own.”

Atkins is accustomed to performing “Room” for SRO crowds. That didn’t happen here. “Los Angeles is just a town where just really beautiful people go and sit and wait to become movie stars,” laments the British actress, who has appeared in such films as “The Dresser” and “Equus” and created the classic TV series, “Upstairs, Downstairs,” with Jean Marsh.

“They are just not into theater. It’s a movie town and I will never go there again in the theater.”

But Atkins’ fans can catch her on the big screen in the British drama “Let Him Have It,” based on the true story of Derek Bentley and Chris Craig, two London teen-agers convicted of murdering a police officer in 1952. The drama centers on Bentley, a mentally retarded epileptic, who, at 19, was convicted and hanged for the crime, which he didn’t commit. Atkins plays Bentley’s mother.

“It was a huge case,” Atkins recalls. “I was 19 at the time and was at drama school and because I absolutely ate, drank and slept theater, I didn’t have time for anything else. But I remember a group going from the drama school demonstrating outside the prison. I am ashamed I didn’t go. But I have always been anti-capital punishment.”

Atkins initially didn’t think she was right for the part of Lilian Bentley when director Peter Medak offered her the job.

“I said to Peter, ‘I remember that case. The boy was only 19 and those women (back then) had children when they were very young. I bet that woman was only about 40 when he was hanged. Are you sure I am not going to be too old for it?’ Peter said, ‘Darling, don’t worry at all. She looks 104 in the photographs!’ ”