The door opens and I think it’s Mikey. I’ll never get over him...
Dame Judi on late husband Michael
DAME Judi Dench says she is not over late husband Michael Williams, nearly 20 years after his death – and still imagines him in their home.
The actress, 85, who is now dating conservationist David Mills, admitted: “I suspect I shall never ever get over Mikey.”
Michael died just three weeks before their 30th wedding anniversary in 2001 after a long battle with lung cancer.
Speaking of her grief, Dame Judi said: “It changes who you are altogether, I think. It’s like you’re walking along and suddenly you’re not looking and there’s an enormous chasm in front of you.
“Unexpected kinds of things happen. Suddenly, you’ll walk in somewhere and there’s a photograph or something. I don’t expect you ever get used to it.
“Sometimes the door in this house just opens and I think that he’s just wandered in.”
The couple first met in a pub on Drury Lane in London’s West End theatre district when they were both young actors working for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Dame Judi said of their relationship: “I don’t think we ever had to work at it. I mean, Mikey used to have black dog days, sometimes. But he was the most unselfish man and he wouldn’t ever attribute that to anything that might be between us... Oh, God, how he used to make me laugh. He used to make me absolutely howl.
“We had a lovely time. It was never a tricky time. I was lucky to meet Mike.”
In the early days of their romance, Michael once flew out to Australia, where she was performing with the RSC, to comfort her after a friend died.
She said: “Mike got a plane and flew out to see us all. It was a saving grace, really. Then he said, ‘ Will you marry me?’ and I said ‘Will you please ask me on a rainy day in Battersea?’ Then it would feel real. So that’s what happened.” They married in 1971 and went on to star together in 80s sitcom A Fine Romance and in 1999 Franco Zeffirelli film Tea with Mussolini.
Michael would often say his talents did not match his wife’s, though he insisted: “I never feel inferior as a person.
“And there are some things I can do a damn sight better than Jude.”
Michael died aged 65 at
NEW LOVE With conservationist David their 17th- century Surrey home, “surrounded by family and friends”.
Shortly before Michael’s death, the couple’s daughter Finty Williams, now 47, and her son Sam, now 23, moved into the family home, along with various animals.
These included, as actress Finty described: “A dog, six cats, two goldfish, ducks and moorhens, and a hamster called Biscuit.”
James Bond star Dame Judi met her current partner David in 2010 when she opened a red squirrel enclosure at the British Wildlife Centre, which he runs, near her home.
She refers to him as “my chap” rather than her “boyfriend”.
She said: “He’s about four miles away. And that’s just lovely because we laugh about the same things.”
The Oscar-winning actress is adamant she will never retire but said: “My eyesight is so bad now that that’s quite tricky. I have ways of learning things.
“As long as I’ve got enough time to prepare, I’ve got great friends who help me with lines and things.”
But Dame Judi said she “loathes” being described as a national treasure, telling David Tennant’s podcast that the phrase reminds her of “something very, very dusty, behind a glass, in a corner”.
She added: “I don’t want to be a relic.”
We had a lovely time, never a tricky time. I was lucky to meet him DAME JUDI DENCH ON LATE HUSBAND MICHAEL