As Judi Dench opens in her most challenging role in Iris, our critic salutes a thespian royal of stage and screen The essential Englishness of an actress can be defined by many things: soft rose-like skin, a willingness to don breath-clogging corsets and smother one’s emotions, a certain poise, a ready wit, the hockey-stick tones of a public-school education. For Dame Judi Dench, our most treasured possession on the acting front (who is actually Anglo-Irish), there are a few extra facets to add to the list.She has a beloved middle-class sitcom to her name, a regular gig in Bond films, a self-parodying appearance on Morecambe and Wise (in 1968) and an auspicious debut playing a snail in her junior-school play. There’s not a bad word to be said about Dench, she’s an institution.
Indeed, the great and the good recently gathered to pay homage at a special Bafta tribute evening solely devoted to “M” and presenting her with an Academy Fellowship. “It was one hell of a way to spend a birthday,” she laughed, modesty as ever prevailing. “In many ways it was the perfect birthday present.”
Oh, how they sung her praises. “She is a unique and extraordinary actress,” gasped Lord Attenborough between tears. “She’s the ultimate Bond girl,” winked Pierce Brosnan, slick as a spoon. “She’s a fabulous actress and a wonderful friend,” whooped Billy Connolly, who had flown in from Los Angeles specially.
In other hands the ensuing torrent of accolades would incite mad rushes to the nearest vomitorium, but for Dench we were quietly pleased. She had just turned 67 and her career had never been in sturdier shape. Now, with her scintillating performance as Iris Murdoch in Iris (see review, page 10), she looks set, at least, for her annual Oscar nomination.
Judith Olivia Dench was born in York on December 9, 1934, and was a pupil at the town’s Mount School, with the author A. S. Byatt coincidentally in the same year. Her mother was Irish, from Dublin, and her father an English doctor, who — significantly — worked as the resident GP for the Theatre Royal in York. Little Judi would tag along and wander wide-eyed backstage as this magical process known as acting was conjured around her. The spell still hasn’t broken. In the meantime she was off to the Central School of Speech and Drama to learn her trade.
Her acting career has a decade-specific symmetry to it. During the 1960s and 1970s it was theatre, the proper grounding. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961, winning raves for her Ophelia, her Titania, the “volatility, insecurity, mischief and moral resilience” of her Lady Macbeth (still seen by many as the defining modern interpretation). She quailed at Cleopatra with typical self-deprecation (“I would be no more than a menopausal dwarf”) before turning in one of the performances of her career.
But it wasn’t all arch-thespianism. She crackled with humour in Noël Coward’s Private Lives and announced her extraordinary versatility in Cabaret, proving she is a hugely emotive singer. In fact, only illness forced her out of the Grizabella role in Cats that was made famous by Elaine Paige.
For the 1980s it was television and the relative comfort zone of the sitcom. She won one of her five Baftas for the series A Fine Romance, alongside her husband of 30 years Michael Williams. Softly but surely Dench had entered the public consciousness. Even Her Majesty down at the Palace was a fan, sending her a personal note of condolence when her Hampstead pad burnt down.
With a sense of acceptable inevitability she followed her award of an OBE (given in 1970) by being appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1988.
In the 1990s Dench became a movie star. She had certainly impressed in a handful of dusty corset dramas, although pair her with Dame Maggie Smith and a riot ensues. “When we were making A Room with a View we laughed and shrieked so much I think we must have unnerved Merchant and Ivory.”
But it was the double whammy of Mrs Brown (gaining her first Oscar nomination) and the curio of a female M opposite a new 007 that brought her into Hollywood’s eyeline. They immediately fell in love with this remarkable queenly figure and formidable acting force. Harvey Weinstein, the thick-set boss of the American indie filmmakers Miramax, quipped: “If it were up to me, Judi Dench would be in all my movies.”
And for a mere eight minutes of a stately and droll Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, they bestowed a Best Supporting Actress Oscar on her. She had just slipped into her sixties and was completely amazed by the turn of events. “If you said this was going to happen, I’d have bet you £1 million it wouldn’t,” she said. “I like them a bit more now.”
Portraying Iris Murdoch, though, was a real challenge — “certainly the hardest thing I have ever done”. The fiercely intelligent author notoriously descended into Alzheimer’s disease, and Dench was going to have to give life to the horrific decline of her faculties. The pressure to do her justice was immense. “It comforts me to know she was Anglo-Irish like me. You can’t hope to be her. All I can do is give her essence.”
With her keen actor’s eye, she found it was the lack of expression in Murdoch that was the detail to crack, the lack of gesture. For those who have seen it, including Murdoch’s widower John Bayley, it is a stunning likeness.
While her career has shone bright, her personal life darkened with tragedy. A year ago her husband, Williams, finally succumbed to the cancer that had crippled him.
She was devastated and reacted instinctively by throwing herself into her work with a vengeance. She followed Iris with The Shipping News, alongside Kevin Spacey in Nova Scotia, then a return to home shores and Lady Bracknell in a new spin on The Importance of Being Earnest. And now, before a new Bond commences, she’s back on the West End stage in The Royal Family.
“I don’t know what I would have done otherwise,” she said of dealing with her sorrow. “Grief produces incredible adrenalin, and in a way this is running the adrenalin out. It’s a use for a whole lot of emotions.”
Thanks to Anne Marie Bourdon for referring me to this article which appeared in The Times (UK) on January 17, 2002