Judi Dench has made a career out of delivering just the right words, such as ait (“It’s an island in a river”). During a game of Bananagrams with a friend, we saw the 91-year-old is still very much in command. “Don’t expect any vowels, because I’ve got them all,” she laughed.
Although she can barely see the letters. “It’s tricky if you’re playing with an almost-blind person,” she said.
Her eyesight is almost gone, robbed by macular degeneration, but there’s no diminishing Dame Judi Dench.
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She got her start on stage in 1957 as Ophelia in “Hamlet” at London’s Old Vic Theatre. Her first starring role in film came 40 years later, in “Mrs. Brown.” But her loyalties are clear. “Oh, theater, theater, theater, theater,” Dench said.
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Asked what she loves so much about the theater, she replied, “I love the fact of a group of people trying to get it better every night, whereas in film, they say ‘Cut,’ and you can’t make it better.”
A meeting with a movie producer early on was not encouraging: “‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you have every single thing wrong with your face.’ So I said, ‘Fine,’ and I walked out and back to the glorious Old Vic.”
She says that criticism didn’t get to her: “No, because I didn’t want to do films. But it must have stayed with me, and, I mean, I suppose my insides have dealt with it.”
Her face would become one of the best-known in cinema. She has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love”; and she’s appeared in eight James Bond films as M, the steely MI6 boss, originally opposite Pierce Brosnan.
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“Pierce came to lunch not long ago,” Dench said. “When he got to the front door, what I’d forgotten was that I have a doormat which says, ‘I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bond…’ He liked that. I think he thought I’d put it there for the occasion!”
What did they talk about? “Oh, everything, everything, of how frightened we were doing the first one together.”
Why frightened of shooting a Bond film? “Well, the responsibility of the part,” she said.
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It’s those sorts of stories that ended up in her new memoir, “Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?” Written with her friend of 30 years and fellow actor Brendan O’Hea, it’s a series of conversations – the books reads like the two of them having a chat. “That is exactly how it evolved,” Dench said. “He knows too much about me, and what he doesn’t know, he makes up.”
“Not true!” O’Hea interjected. “Working on this book has made me realize I knew Jude to be fun and generous and kind, and a fantastic, life-affirming human being, and a mischief-maker. But you realize all that was in embryo in her childhood. It was all there, and I think when you read about the childhood and your faith, your Quakerism, I think that is what’s kind of probably shaped you.”
“And being part of a happy family,” she said. “How lucky.”
At her home in England, she’s planted trees in memory of friends and family, including her late husband, actor Michael Williams. She says it was friendship at first sight: “Yes, and a sense of humor, and daftness.”
She planted a crabapple for Maggie Smith: “Well, because she was a terrific friend, and because she was unbelievably witty and funny. And I thought it actually suited her very well!”
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Over the years, Dench has found herself in rather good company. She recalls a knock on her door and Sidney Poitier walking in. She felt ‘completely dumbstruck” she said.
Does she really get starstruck still? “You are joking!” Dench replied.
But you’re Dame Judi Dench! “Seth, that doesn’t matter – Sidney Poitier!”
Yet, Dench doesn’t believe that others might feel the same sense of awe when meeting her. “No, they don’t,” she said.
O’Hea said to Dench, “I think you mean that. I think that you are genuinely surprised when people come up to you and say nice things. You have no vanity. I think it goes back to that moment when that film producer said you have everything wrong with your face. I think something was lodged there.”
“Did me a good service,” Dench said. “I don’t think I do have much vanity.”
In her book, Dench is also very frank about aging. “There’s nothing to be said for it, at all,” she said. “I can’t now read, I can’t go to the theater.”
And so, she says, she cannot take on roles anymore. “It’s because I can’t see, so there’s nothing I can do.”
But she does remember lines. “Oh yes, I can remember all sorts of lines,” she said. “I could do an hour of Shakespeare for you now.”
And so, we asked if she could give us an example. She recited from “Antony and Cleopatra,” and did so flawlessly: Dame Judi Dench still has these lines deep in her.
I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man …
His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm
Crested the world. His voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends …
For his bounty, there was no winter in ‘t …
In his livery walked crowns and crownets;
Think you there was, or might be such a man,
as this I dreamed of?
READ AN EXCERPT: “Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It?” by Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Dame Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea (Video)
Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Jason Schmidt.
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