Rebecca Eaton

Rebecca Eaton OBE
Rebecca Eaton at the 70th Annual Peabody Awards
Born	(1947-11-07) November 7, 1947 (age 69) Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Nationality	American
Occupation	Television producer, film producer
Spouse(s)	Paul Robert Cooper (1984-present)

Rebecca Eaton OBE (born November 7, 1947) is an American television and film producer best known for introducing American audiences to British costume and countryside dramas as executive producer of the PBS Masterpiece series.

In 2011 she was one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World".

Eaton was born in Boston and raised in Pasadena, California, her father a Caltech English literature professor and her mother, Katherine Emery, an actress both on Broadway (in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour) and in film. Eaton recalls visiting New York every summer to see Broadway shows as well as spending her junior high school days lost in Jane Eyre.

Eaton attended Vassar, graduating in 1969 with a BA in English literature. Her senior thesis was on James Joyce's Dubliners. In 1969-70 she was a production assistant for the BBC World Service in London. Returning to the U.S., she was in 1972 hired by WGBH in Boston, there producing Pantechnicon (a radio arts magazine) and the television programs Zoom and Enterprise.

Eaton became the third executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre. Christopher Sarson was at the helm from its inception in 1971. Sarson had bought Upstairs, Downstairs from ITV. Eaton succeeded the series' second executive producer, Joan Wilson, in 1985.

Under Eaton, Masterpiece extended its reach into feature film co-production for such films as Jane Austen's Persuasion and Mrs. Brown starring Dame Judi Dench.