Behind you! M promises a licence to chill
JUDI DENCH said she’s going to haunt the next Bond film. The actress, expected to be an Oscar contender for her sublime portrait of heartbreak and humour in the movie Philomena, was killed off as M — to the shock of many — in the last 007 film Skyfall and replaced as spy chief by Ralph Fiennes.
‘That was a good secret to keep,’ she said, admiringly, of how critics and the first cinemagoers to see it refused to give away Skyfall’s ending.
When told that John Logan was doing the screenplay for the upcoming Bond adventure, which Sam Mendes will begin filming next autumn, she feigned outrage. ‘How dare he do that! How dare he!’
She added: ‘I’ll come back in the window of M’s office, showing the red card to Ralph Fiennes, a nd I’ll have a bi g, bi g photograph on his desk with my tongue out. I’ll haunt them,’ she said, laughing.
Judi has fond memories of working on the Bond films — but had just as many laughs opposite Steve Coogan on Philomena.
The film, directed by Stephen Frears, is based on a true story about how Irish-born Philomena Lee, with the help of former broadcaster Martin Sixsmith, embarked on an emotional journey to find the son Catholic nuns had forced her to give up for adoption more than 50 years previously. ‘Steve made me laugh every single day,’ Judi said of Coogan, who portrays Sixsmith ‘He’s an eejit,’ she said, assuming Philomena’s accent.
‘What better relationship can you have? Especially when you’re doing something quite serious. He just made me cry laughing.’
Coogan, she said, visited her at home and read her an outline of the story. ‘He sat in the garden. It was rather cold and I wouldn’t ask him in, because once he started, I was riveted. He must have been freezing!’
Judi said she was impressed by the real-life Philomena. ‘She’s a rare person, and after all that she endured, her faith’s strong. It says a great deal about her and, ironically, the Catholic Church.’
Judi met Philomena for lunch before filming began, ‘just to get a flavour of her’.
‘All I’m concerned about is that we do her justice,’ said Judi. ‘I’m so anxious that we don’t shortchange people on their story and that we don’t over-dramatise it — or over-glamorise it — but that we tell it as it is and that they feel we’ve been responsible.’
Judi noted t hat t he r eal Philomena is more glamorous than she’s portrayed in the film.
‘I marvelled at her hair and she said: “I never had the tint bottle far from me!”
‘She’s also taller. Though I couldn’t do anything about that.’
In January, Judi will join Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton and Celia Imrie to shoot the sequel to John Madden and Ol Parker’s 2011 surprise hit movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, about British pensioners who relocate to India.
Then she and that heart-throb Dustin Hoffman will star in a BBC TV adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, about a shy man who falls for his neighbour, though she has eyes only for Alfie, her tortoise.
Philomena is at the BFI London Film Festival next Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. It goes on general release on November 1.