Marry again? I’m too old now, says Dame Judi
After losing her husband of 30 years in 2001, the actress says she is not sure what to call her new man
WHAT to call your significant other when you are happily unmarried? According to Dame Judi Dench, there is nothing worse than the word “partner”.
The actress, who was widowed in 2001, has been in a relationship with David Mills for the past few years. She has ruled out the possibility of marrying again at 82, but said she struggled to find an adequate word to describe him.
“I don’t know what the word is because I don’t like the word ‘partner’. Partner is something to do with dancing,” she said. “Partner – horrible word. Friend? No. Boyfriend? No. Chap? Will chap do?”
The couple met when Mills, a conservationist, invited Dame Judi to open a red squirrel enclosure at the wildlife centre he runs near her home in Surrey.
“He is not going to propose. No, no, no, no, no. Let’s just pull ourselves together and be our age!” she told Good Housekeeping magazine. “I have a jolly nice friend now.
“One hot night during the summer, we swam and then had a glass of champagne in the garden and I said, ‘This is so fantastic’. But perhaps if I was a romantic I’d have been cool and calm about it. I get a bit over-excited about things. “I love having a good laugh. A sense of humour is the most attractive thing of all. It’s essential.”
Dame Judi was married to Michael Williams, the actor, for 30 years. They appeared together in the Eighties sitcom A Fine Romance. He sent her a red rose every Friday.
They had one daughter, Finty, and Dame Judi said her one regret was not having a great brood of children.
“I wish I’d had lots more children. I had planned to have six, easily,” she said. “The rewards you get out of it. Finty and I are so close.”
The actress will appear next in Victoria and Abdul, a film about Queen Victoria’s relationship with an Indian servant, Abdul Karim. The cast features Tim Pigott-smith, the actor who died earlier this year, and Dame Judi said losing him had made her think about her own mortality.
He was “a great mate of mine. And then suddenly you hear he is not there any more,” she said. “That not only frightens me, but it also depresses the hell out of me.”
The film marks the second time the actress has played Queen Victoria – 20 years ago she portrayed her in Mrs Brown, dramatising the monarch’s relationship with another servant, and earned an Oscar nomination. With five further Academy Award nominations and one win to her name, Dame Judi is Britain’s most garlanded actress. But she holds out little hope that the gender pay gap will close.
She said: “Salary, parts, you name it: it’s better now than it’s ever been, I think, but it will never be on a parity. Never.
“No matter how much we speak out. We are put in our place.”
The full interview is in the October issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale Aug 30
‘Partner – horrible word. Friend? No. Boyfriend? No. Chap? Will chap do?’