DAME JUDI DENCH:
“I’ll never stop being naughty!”
At 84 years old, Judi Dench is one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood. But when she’s not playing a spy, or Shakespeare’s wife, or an elderly cat, or a gender-bending fairy police commander – yes, these are all actual roles for Judi in 2019 – you’ll find her in amongst her greatest passion: trees. “My life now is just trees. Trees and ... um ... and champagne,” she says, with a characteristically naughty wink.
For 30 years, Judi has been tending an area of woodland at the back of her two-hectare property in Surrey. When
she spoke with The Weekly back in 2017, she confessed that, in the summer, she was fond of taking off her clothes and standing naked in the garden to “enjoy the blissful air”.
It was this unbridled love of nature that brought her together – nine years after the death of her husband Michael Williams in 2001 – with David Mills, a one-time dairy farmer turned conservationist, to whom she refers as her “beau” or her “chap”. They met one day when she visited David’s wildlife reserve “as a punter”. He invited her back to open a squirrel enclosure and she has been romantically involved with the dashing 76-year-old ever since.
“It developed as a slow, organic friendship that grew,” he told Radio Times in the UK. “I invited her to come and have supper one night, and then she asked me to one of her things. It’s lasted because we have the same sense of humour – it’s hopeless without that – and then she’s passionate about wildlife, as I am about theatre and films.”
With that passion, in the woods behind Judi’s home, she has created not just an environmental sanctuary but a tribute to loved ones who have died.
Every time she loses a close family member or friend, she plants a tree.
There are trees for her husband Michael, her brother Geoff, actress and friend Natasha Richardson, and actor Robert Hardy. “I think of my trees as part of my extended family,” she says.
It’s a rare bit of nostalgia from someone who is, for the most part, completely unsentimental about ageing. Back in 2018, Judi and three of her best friends (Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Eileen Atkins and Dame Joan Plowright) starred in the documentary Nothing Like a Dame. Asked by director, Roger Michell to reflect on aging, Judi returned serve with,“F**k off, Roger.”And went on to recount an anecdote about the aftermath of being stung on the bum by a hornet:
“A paramedic walked into the room who was about 17 and he said, ‘What’s our name?’ I said, ‘My name is Judi.’ And he said, ‘Have we got a carer?’
And I blew my top. I completely blew my top. I said, ‘F**k off. I’ve just done eight weeks in The Winter’s Tale at the Garrick Theatre.’ I was so angry.”
Maggie Smith offers another anecdote in which fellow British thespian Miriam Margolyes asked Judi why she’d made no plans for her funeral, and Judi retorted, “Because I’m not going to die.”
So, no – if you thought being in her 80s might have worn away some of that attitude, then you would be wrong.
Nor has she lost any of that extraordinary talent.
All of Judi’s Academy Award nominations came after the age of 60. She was a mainstay of the James Bond franchise for almost 20 years – far longer than any of the Bonds themselves. We have her late husband Michael Williams to thank for that. She was unsure about taking on the role of M until he told her: “I long to live with a Bond woman.”
Judi got her first tattoo at 81, at the insistence of her daughter, the actress Finty Williams. “Carpe Diem” is now etched on her inner wrist. She is certainly continuing to seize the day. This year alone she appears on screen in four major films – Red Joan, All Is True, Artemis Fowl (based on the books by Irish author Eoin Colfer) and Cats.
Kenneth Branagh, the actor/director who cast Judi in Murder on the Orient Express, is also directing Artemis Fowl, a sci-fi children’s movie that sees Judi play a gender-bending fairy, and he provides a little insight into what prompts Judi to say yes to a role. “Whenever I ask Judi to do something, she says, ‘Is it different?’” In the books, the police commander is male, but Kenneth had an “uninformed hunch” that Judi would be perfect for the role, and apparently she is. He describes her portrayal as “Napoleonic”.
The other huge production on which she is currently working is the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary musical Cats. The role has been a long time coming. Judi was cast in the original 1981 stage version as two different characters, Jennyanydots and Grizabella (who sings the iconic Memory). But weeks out from opening night, Judi snapped her Achilles tendon and was in a full cast. Andrew Lloyd Webber delayed the premiere, but in another rehearsal and still in her cast, Judi fell off the stage and realised she would have to drop out, with Elaine Paige taking on the famous role.
So 38 years later, it’s finally Judi’s time to shine. She will play the originally male character of respected cat elder Old Deuteronomy, and the cast – which also includes pop star Taylor Swift and Luther actor Idris Elba – will be shrunk down and furred up thanks to CGI technology. It will be, as Kenneth Branagh’s rule suggests, another very “different” role for Judi. But despite the fact that she has parts lined up for another year or so, Judi says she still fears that at any stage her career could
disappear. “I can’t turn things down. If I’m offered a job, I always do it, because I think it’s the last job I’m going to be asked to do.”
The fact that international success only struck in the second half of Judi’s career has clearly had a impact. After decades working with the UK’s finest theatre companies, Judi became a regular on British TV shows like A Fine Romance (in which she starred alongside her husband Michael Williams), Middlemarch and As Time Goes By, before an unlikely fairy godmother – or maybe Mafiosostyle godfather – plucked her out of her UK fame circle and made her an international superstar.
It was the – now disgraced – film producer Harvey Weinstein who saw Judi’s potential, casting her in a series of films, including Mrs Brown, Chocolat and Shakespeare in Love, the 1998 movie for which she won an Academy Award. That win broke a record as well – in her role as Elizabeth I, Judi spent just eight minutes on screen, making it the shortest performance ever to win an Oscar.
Judi makes a magnificent monarch and she’s had some practice, with three royal film roles in her 60-year career.“Are you bored with playing queens?” she was asked in 2017. “Yup, a bit,” she replied.
It’s the mischief behind the majesty that’s one of the reasons Judi has become so beloved. Alan Bennett, the famous UK playwright and actor, once said the most offensive T-shirt he could think of would be one that read, “I hate Judi Dench.” But Judi herself is no fan of her moniker as a national treasure; in fact she detests the phrase. “I hate that,” she told The New York Times. “I just want to be called a joker. A jobbing actor. Somebody who has a laugh.”
UK comedian Tracey Ullman once made some satirical videos of her playing “the real Judi Dench”, who used her national treasure status to get away with everything: shoplifting alcohol, kicking over rubbish bins, awarding herself every prize at the BAFTAs. It was one of actual Judi’s favourite jokes: “It’s so anarchic, I love it,” she says. “It’s much more like me than anything else.”
Olivia Colman, star of The Crown, starred alongside Judi in Murder on the Orient Express and describes her as one of the naughtiest people she’s ever met. You get the impression that it’s this kind of description Judi lives for. In fact, she made headlines recently for some erotically-charged comments about her active sex life at 84.
“Well of course,” she said, with hopefully a slight tone of outrage, to the Radio Times reporter who asked her if she still enjoyed sex. “You still feel desire – does that ever go?” Her trick for keeping things interesting behind closed doors? “A lovely naughty knicker shop [in Covent Garden] ... but don’t buy up everything because I’m going there.”
Judi is delighted to be a role model for others, widowed or single, in later life. “To the older reader, I would say: ‘Don’t give up,’” she laughs. And clearly that’s a philosophy which extends beyond her romantic life.
“Don’t give up” has been a motto
Judi has sworn by. Even a diagnosis of macular degeneration in 2012 has done little to slow her down. Yes, she has to undergo treatment every six weeks, and yes, her scripts have to be given to her in very large font, and yes, when she goes to see a movie, her friends will often have to describe it to her. But Judi is determined not to be beaten by it and has found it actually quite helpful in one particular way:
“Because I can only really see who someone is when I’m six inches away, I have to get very close to people – and I mean extremely close,” she says. (And you can just imagine the mischief in her eyes with this sentence.) “Which is handy with the fellas. Wonderful, really. You have to find a silver lining, don’t you?”
“To the older reader, I would say: ‘Don’t give up’.”