Eileen trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 

Theatre credits include: Love’s Labours Lost (The Open Air Theatre, Regents Park).  Richard II, The Tempest and Twelfth Night (Old Vic), Semi Detached with Laurence Olivier, Exit The King with Alec Guinness, The Restoration Of Arnold Middleton, The Killing Of Sister George (Evening Standard Award for Best Actress),The Promise, The Cocktail Party (Chichester and the West End), The Sleepers Den (The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs), Vivat! Vivat! Regina (Chichester Festival, Piccadilly Theatre and New York), Suzanna Andler (Aldwych Theatre), St Joan (Old Vic), Medea (Young Vic). Passion Play (RSC at Aldwych Theatre).

For the National Theatre: Heartbreak House, Cymbeline, Mountain Language, The Winter’s Tale, The Night Of The Iguana (Critics Award), John Gabriel Borkman, Honour (for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Actress)

A Room Of One’s Own as Virginia Woolf for which she won the Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance (Lamb’s theatre in New York and a short nationwide tour of the USA including a season at the Westwood Center in Los Angeles). Eileen wrote and performed in Vita And Virginia, at the Chichester Festival Theatre - as Virginia Woolf opposite Penelope Wilton’s Vita Sackville (the Ambassadors Theatre and the Union Square Theatre in New York)

As You Like It (Stratford, Conneticut); The Duchess Of Malfi (Mark Taper Center, Los Angeles); Mary Barnes (Long Wharf Theater, Conneticut); Prin (Manhattan Theater Club); Indiscretions (Broadway); Retreat From Moscow (Broadway)

A Delicate Balance (Theatre Royal Haymarket), for which she won The Evening Standard Award; The Unexpected Man for which she won an Olivier award for Best Actress. 

The Birthday Party (Duchess Theatre, London); Doubt (Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater); There Came A Gypsy (Almeida Theatre, London)

Her film credits include: The Dresser; Equus; Jack & Sarah; Wolf; Gosford Park; Cold Mountain and Vanity Fair and in 2007 Evening with Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep.

Her Television credits are many, the most recent are: Wakinig The Dead; Ballet Shoes and Miss Jenkyns in Cranford.

Her writing credits, apart from Vita & Verginia include; Mrs Dalloway for which she won The Evening Standard Award. She also co-created with Jean Marsh Upstairs Downstairs and The House Of Elliot.