DATELINE HOLLYWOOD
REEL TALK
June 21, 2020
ONE-ON-ONE
June 21, 2020
Adoyenne of the big screen, TV and stage, Dame Judi Dench sits in the upper echelons of British acting royalty. She’s enjoyed a career spanning more than 60 years, and continuously moved between stage and screen. A favourite of the Royal Shakespeare Company, she has won as many as seven Oscar nominations.
For an actress who will be celebrating her 86th birthday in December, you wonder whether Dench feels she has anything left to achieve.
“In a word, no!” she declares. “I feel I moved past that stage many years ago and I’m doing it now for the thrill of it. I’ve never tried to be one of those actors who appears in everything all over the place; and now, I’m happy to take a backseat and pick up the odd opportunity if it excites me,” she reveals.
Despite her protests, Dame Judi’s workload has never lessened; nor has her ability to style a rich, versatile, engaging character out of even the most lightweight of scripts diminished.
For instance, look no further than the Best Actress in a Supporting Role award for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love in 1998. Her Academy Award came despite the fact that she only appeared on screen for eight minutes, something that is truly a credit to her dramatic expertise.
It’s perhaps through the James Bond series that we became most familiar with this actress whose persona and approach to the industry has humility at its heart.
After joining the Bond franchise in 1995 as M, the only woman the leading man will answer to, Dench appeared in seven 007 movies; and finally, she said goodbye to spies, villains and espionage in 2012 in Skyfall – though she had a small cameo role in Spectre three years later.
Many thought her death in the movie was to act as a metaphor for a slowing of acting projects but this isn’t the case.
From the title role in Stephen Frears’ Philomena to reprising Evelyn Greenslade in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – across Murder on the Orient Express, Red Joan, All Is True, Cats and others – ‘grey pound’ movies are being popularised as moviegoers continue to evolve.
Dame Judi reflects: “I am glad that older and more mature actors are getting a look-in. The movie world will always have young stars in it – it needs them and thrives off them.”
She continues: “But it’s been wrong to suppose than anyone over the age of about 40 is irrelevant and what we’ve seen in the past decade or so has been a real cultural shift in which older generations have been allowed to take the lead in films that usually would have been reserved for younger types.”
Does that give her the confidence and courage to push on further with new projects?
She explains: “It’s not so much about being brave. It has just as much to do with security. Trevor Nunn once came to wish me luck on a first night and asked me why I’m always in tears on a first night.”
Dench continues: “I replied that it’s because I never think I’m going to be employed again. And although it’s quite a jokey light-hearted thing to say, I still have that fear deep inside. Perhaps it’s healthy to be like that and maybe I don’t want it to change.”
Fear may keep this actress on her toes but not at the expense of personal pride.
“What I don’t like is when you play something and after that, you are sent scripts exactly like the person you’ve recently played. I don’t want to play similar characters – my preference is to play people who are as different as possible,” she reveals.
Not one for negativity, Dame Judi is refreshing in the way she transforms what some may deem as regrets into learning experiences.
She admits: “I never liked The Merchant of Venice. It’s the only Shakespeare play I don’t like but my late husband Michael and I did it the year after we were married and I turned it from a play I didn’t like into one I was glad that I’d done.”
“I think that’s the way you have to approach anything in life. Take the positive out of the experience and use it as a mental building block for the next thing,” she elaborates.
Having devoted some six decades to her craft, Dench is surrounded by friends in the industry.
“The best thing is you don’t have to worry about making a fool of yourself or anything like that because they have seen you making a fool of yourself for years and years!” she says with a laugh.
Dame Judi has struggled with macular degeneration in recent years; but despite that, she’s eliminated the ‘R word’ from her vocabulary: She declares: “I don’t use the word ‘retire’.”
– Compiled by hub.branded
