Both Oscar winners. Both widowed. And, from tonight, both on the same stage. But is Dame Maggie or Dame Judi our greatest national treasure?
There's nothing like a Dame on the London stage, and tonight the West End will have two as Judi Dench and Maggie Smith appear together in David Hare's new play, The Breath Of Life. Both on and off stage, their lives have amazing parallels. Here, Daily Mail theatre critic MICHAEL COVENEY makes an affectionate comparison...
FAMILY BACKGROUND
BORN within three weeks of each other in 1934 (Judi on 9 December, Maggie on 28 December), they have similar backgrounds, though Judi is a notch up the social ladder.
Her father was a doctor in York, where she attended the Mount School.
Maggie's dad was a laboratory technician from Newcastle, her mother Scottish. She was born in Ilford, Essex, but the family moved to Oxford at the outbreak of war, where Maggie mixed with theatrical undergraduates including the future producer Ned Sherrin.
Judi joined the Old Vic in 1957. In the same year, Maggie appeared in a revue with Kenneth Williams, having already made a name for herself on Broadway.
Both have two older brothers.
Maggie: 2/5 Judi: 3/5
Judi's 30-year marriage to fellow actor Michael Williams was bedevilled by her fame and his lack of it. But love saw them through, overriding previous affairs with actors Leonard Rossiter and Charles Thomas. The couple were inseparable until Michael's death from cancer [at age] 65 last year.
Maggie's rock was writer Beverley Cross, whom she married in 1975 after a tempestuous marriage to actor Robert Stephens. Beverley died in 1998, aged 66.
Both Dames have no shortage of admirers. Judi loves almost everyone, from directors Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall to actors Jim Broadbent and Kevin Spacey.
Maggie thrives on solitude, but occasionally kicks up her heels with best friends Joan Plowright and producer Helen Montagu.
Maggie: 2/5 Judi: 2/5
Dame Judi is a late arrival on the Hollywood scene, scooping the pool as two Queens - Victoria and Elizabeth I - in Mrs Brown and Shakespeare In Love respectively.
In the latter, she appeared for eight minutes and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Maggie won her first Oscar as Best Actress in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie 30 years ago, and followed up with a second as Best Supporting Actress in California Suite opposite Michael Caine.
Best performances on celluloid?
Maggie in The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne, Judi in Iris.
Both have hit the serial blockbuster jackpot: Judi completing her fourth Bond movie as a deadpan, bureaucratic M, Maggie booked for the Harry Potter series as Minerva McGonagall, Harry's witch-like deputy head.
Maggie: 3/5 Judi: 2/5
Judi is an English rose, a woman of light and fickle humour with sudden bursts of deep, buried sadness.
Maggie is an angular, spiky character with expressive elbows and wrists, and an ability to turn emotions on a sixpence.
Judi's mellifluous voice is known for having a glorious shiver, with a permanent sob or crack in it; Maggie's is equally capable of snapping like a ginger biscuit or cawing like a crow.
Maggie is the taller and slimmer of the two.
Both have had the odd nip and tuck facially, but not so you'd notice too much.
Judi always looks comfortably dressed; Maggie stylishly so, her lustrous red hair always perfectly bobbed.
Maggie: 3/5 Judi: 2/5
A walkover round. The nation loves Judi like they loved the Queen Mother. And doing two excellent TV sitcoms (A Fine Romance with late husband Michael Williams, and As Time Goes By with Geoffrey Palmer), hasn't hurt.
She visibly supports good causes and was the 9/11 victims' families' choice to read at the Westminster Abbey memorial service. She also launches ships and breaks the champagne bottle so the contents fly back in her face: Judi Drench.
Maggie is so fiercely private, you sometimes wonder if she'd risk being caught signing an autograph - let alone giving to charity. And she'd not thank you for drawing attention to the fact if she did (which she does).
Judi: 5/5 Maggie: 0/5
Stephen Fry once said of Judi: 'I believe that railings should be built around her so that all may admire her in an orderly and respectful fashion.'
Kate Winslet, who starred with her as the late Iris Murdoch in the film Iris, added: 'I would work with Judi if I had to be a tea lady hovering in the back.'
Judi says of Maggie: 'She does things in such a daring way that she leaves me standing - and she leaves me laughing.'
And Alan Bennett says that, like him, Maggie is very lugubrious, seeing things as disastrous and hilarious in equal measure.
He has said that he believes that 'critics who condescend to her should consider themselves lucky to be living in her time'.
Judi: 2/5 Maggie: 2/5
Here, although she was a brilliant founder member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre, the reticence of Maggie's personality lets her down.
She has played the great Shakespearean roles - Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra - but only in Canada, where she fled after her first marriage to Robert Stephens broke down in the 1970s.
In Restoration comedy, she has been an unbeatable Millamant in The Way Of The World, and in tragedy, has played an extraordinary Hedda Gabler.
But Judi has worked consistently with both the RSC and the National, giving definitive performances as Beatrice in Much Ado, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra.
Judi: 4/5 Maggie: 1/5
Both our actresses have made memorable assaults on the iconic role of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest - supposedly the property in recent times of Edith Evans.
'A handbag!' is the Becher's Brook of comic lines, when Lady B is told of Jack's improvised cradle on Victoria Station. Both Judi and Maggie drove a coach and horses straight through, getting the big laugh a few moments later.
In 1982, Judi discovered new elements of forgetfulness and flirtatiousness in a brilliant revival at the National.
When Maggie played the role in the West End, she revealed the vulnerable little girl. A close call, this, but Judi counter-punched with a magisterial performance in the recent film.
Judi: 3/5 Maggie: 2/5
Actress Finty Williams, Judi's daughter, is the joy of her life, even though Finty was eight months pregnant with Sam (now five) before she told her mother. And the father's identity is a well-kept secret.
Finty now lives with Sam and Judi in a leafy, cosy hideaway.
Maggie's two sons by Robert Stephens, both actors, were in effect raised by their stepfather Beverley. The eldest, Chris Larkin (he had to take a new name as an Equity member, and liked Larkin's poetry), is a talented character actor. Toby Stephens, now married to an American, is a sulphurous romantic lead.
Maggie lives in an Edwardian villa off the Fulham Road in London, and in a beautiful farmhouse in West Sussex.
Judi: 2/5 Maggie: 3/5
On stage, in an all-star revival at the Haymarket, Judi said: 'May heaven strike me dead if I ever appear in an all-star revival.' And once, when I interviewed her over lunch at a Chinese restaurant, I failed the audition: 'You keep spilling food on the tablecloth. I must make a note never to cast you as a footman or a waiter. You have no social graces whatsoever.' Maggie's jaundiced view of the world makes her think funny without trying.
When writing her biography, I was referred to as 'the premature obituarist'.
And most recently, in Gosford Park, when Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello launched into yet another song at the piano, she turned to an enthusiastic admirer and hissed: 'Don't encourage him. He's got a very large repertoire.'
Judi: 2/5 Maggie: 3/5
The points total up as follows: Judi with 27, Maggie with 21. I hereby declare Judi Dench the winner - a victory generously conceded by Maggie, no doubt, as a mere curtain-raiser to the main match to be slugged out before a paying public and the critics...let battle commence!
This article appeared in The Daily Mail on October 15, 2002. Thanks to Maree for sending the article and photo.