|
ED BRADLEY: Even though she was considered by many to be England's
greatest living actress, as recently as five years ago, most Americans had
never heard of Judi Dench. But then, in 1997, she landed her first starring
role in a movie. She played Queen Victoria in the film "Mrs. Brown." Then
a year later, she played Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in Love," and audiences around the world sat up and took notice.
Dench had always been a bit wary of film because 43 years ago, a producer told her to stick to the
stage, that she didn't have the right look to make it on the big screen. In the
last five years, she has won an Oscar, two Golden Globes and a Tony, and
she's accomplished all this when she least expected it, at the age of 67.
Scenes from the 1999 Oscars
BRADLEY: (Voiceover)
Dench was only on screen for eight minutes in "Shakespeare in Love," but that eight minutes won her her first Academy
Award.
Scenes
from the 1999 Tony Awards
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Eleven weeks later, she was on the red carpet
again, this time winning a Tony Award for best actress for her performance
in the Broadway play "Amy's View."
BRADLEY:
Is it gratifying to - to make that kind of step, that kind of achievement
when you're not in your 20s or 30s?
Dame JUDI DENCH: Yes. (laughs) When you're so old, you mean?
(laughs) Yes. Well, it's extraordinary.
BRADLEY: (laughs) So it's - it's never too late?
Dame JUDI: No. Never too late for anything.
Scenes from
"Shakespeare in Love", "Chocolat", "Mrs. Brown" and
"IRIS"
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Never too late to become a film star, playing
strong passionate women, like the formidable Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in Love"...
...the crusty grandmother in "Chocolat," ... the imposing, yet vulnerable Queen Victoria in "Mrs. Brown"...
and now, for "IRIS," her latest movie, she's won her fourth Academy Award nomination in five years.
Dench gives an unflinching portrayal of the writer Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's
disease.
BRADLEY:
You almost never see age with women in movies. And you saw that in that character.
There were close ups of hands, lines and faces. And many
Hollywood actresses wouldn't allow that.
Scenes from "IRIS"
Dame JUDI:
Many Hollywood actresses didn't have somebody early on in their career saying, 'You have everything wrong with your face.' I've settled
for that. This is not about glamour. You know, you just have to tell a story,
and that was part of the story.
BRADLEY: Ho-how do you see yourself?
Dame JUDI: I don't - I don't look.
BRADLEY: I mean your image of yourself.
Dame JUDI: I don't think of myself. But that wasn't me playing Iris.
That - I'm nothing like that. I'm nothing like that. I'm a tall, willowy blonde
of indeterminate years. (laughs)
Footage of London's West
End, Bradley and Dench entering the Royal Haymarket Theater; "The Royal Family" poster)
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) In the eyes of the British public, Dame Judi
Dench is the reigning queen of the West End, London's theater district.
That's where we caught up with her, performing as usual to packed houses
in the play, "The Royal Family," about the Barrymores.
Dame JUDI: It's such a beautiful theater.
BRADLEY:
(Voiceover) And despite the success in movies, she's still most comfortable on the stage in front of an audience.
Dame JUDI:
I can make that audience believe that I am not - I am not like I am as a
person - as a normal person.
BRADLEY: Not 5' 2".
Dame JUDI: Not 5' 1-3/4 ", thank you very much, Ed.
Get it right, your facts. (laughs) But I can - I can fool people. But on film,
tricky.
BRADLEY: It's amazing when you look at it. It - it really is a
make-believe world out here.
Dame JUDI: Yes, it is.
BRADLEY: And you have to make people believe.
Dame JUDI: Believe in it. From here, it's all ours. And from there, it's all
yours. But we have to kind of woo you over to un-understand what this extraordinary place is like.
Footage of Dench putting on
makeup
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) That wooing begins every night while Dench is
putting on her makeup in her dressing room. Half an hour before curtain time, Dench has an assistant turn up the speakers so she can hear the
audience as they take their seats. She says this gives her a feel for the
audience, so that when she walks out on stage, she's already prepared to
seduce them.
Excerpt
from "The Royal Family"
Dame JUDI:
They've done you the service of coming to the theater and buying the ticket. What you have to do is to give them something and bait
them. Once, we'd all had a party, and it was a matinee the next day. And
we were all feeling very hung over. And in the first scene, I saw a lady
sitting in a blue coat in about the second row. And I said - looking a bit
kind of - like that. So I said to the company in the - someone at the interval,
I said, 'I know what we'll do. Let's just do it for that woman. We'll do it for
her, the whole play. And then there'll be a kind of purpose and we'll feel a
bit better.' And she left at the interval. (laughs)
BRADLEY: So at the intermission, she left?
Dame JUDI: Obviously - obviously couldn't take it, could she? And we
went downhill steadily from then on.
Early
Photos
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Dench's career has been anything but downhill.
She made her first appearance on stage at nine in local theater with her
brother and father, a doctor and amateur actor. She went on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played many classical roles,
including Ophelia and Juliet, and performed opposite many of the leading
men of the British theater. Those were heady, freewheeling days in the '60s,
and Dench, then in her early 30s, was caught up in the scene, as she says...
Dame JUDI:
Horsing around with other people. (laughs)
BRADLEY: (laughs) Horsing around with other people. Yeah, right. So when you
were young, you were a wild thing, huh?
Dame JUDI: Yes, I was quite wild. I was in love all the time. But then,
nothing's changed.
BRADLEY: But they were loves that never went anywhere?
Dame JUDI: Oh, they went a little way. But they didn't go the whole hog.
BRADLEY: I think I'll leave it there.
Footage of Dench and
Bradley walking near her former home in Hampstead
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Dench's earthy side often comes out in her
performances, as it did in her breakout role as Sally Bowles in the 1968
London production of the musical "Cabaret." That performance earned her rave reviews and enough money to buy her first house in North London.
Although she lives outside of London now, she wanted to bring us here because this house meant so much to her.
Dame JUDI: I fell for it in a big way, and I took out a mortgage and
I - and I bought it. Drunk with power, I was. But I never regretted it. I just loved
the house. And a lot of people were put off because it looks over the churchyard.
BRADLEY: It didn't bother you, living next to...
Dame JUDI: No, not in the slightest. No.
BRADLEY: ...the cemetery? No?
Dame JUDI: I mean, we used to have parties over there in the churchyard.
BRADLEY: In the cemetery?
Dame JUDI: Yes. One day, a woman passing - I mean, absolutely
screamed at me - screamed at me. I thought the people underneath would be quite pleased, actually.
BRADLEY: You put it to some good use.
Dame JUDI: Yes.
Wedding
Photo of Williams and Dench
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) She was living here, when, at 36, she married
fellow actor Michael Williams. She calls it the most important relationship
in her life. But she didn't make it to the wedding on time, even though the
church was just right up the street.
BRADLEY: How can you be late when you live right here?
Dame JUDI: I know. I was late. I will tell you why I was late. I was late
because an old friend of mine rang me up and asked me to marry him at that
moment. And I said, 'I can't, because four minutes ago, I should have been
married to Michael Williams.' That's true.
BRADLEY: And he didn't know you were getting married.
Dame JUDI: No.
BRADLEY: Ay!
Dame JUDI: No. He said, 'I'm frightfully sorry. I think I mistimed it.' I
said, 'Just a touch.'
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Judi
Dench and Michael Williams became
household names in Britain, performing together on stage and in a popular
British sitcom, "A Fine Romance." She was married to her late husband for 30 years,
and it was one of the most enduring marriages in British theater.
BRADLEY:
What was the glue that - that held you two together?
Dame JUDI: Sense of humor. If I wasn't married to him, he'd have been
my best friend. He had a great sense of humor, and he was also very, very
level. He - he was a Cancerian and I'm a Sagittarian, so he said he's a crab
scuttling towards the dark, and I'm a man with a horse's bottom scuttling
towards the light. And somehow, we held each other in a kind of middle earth situation.
BRADLEY:
(Voiceover) That sense of humor that attracted Dench to her husband also
attracted her to her best-known role.
BRADLEY: You've said that in - in every part, you have to
find some truth of the character...
Dame JUDI: Mm-hmm.
BRADLEY: ...in yourself. Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in
Love"-what was your handle there?
Dame JUDI: Well, we know she had a wonderful sense of humor. It's that
famous story about the courtier who was in court and bowed and farted.
And he was so ashamed that he went away for five years. And he came back into court, and she saw him one day and she said, 'We have forgot the
fart,' she said. I mean, it's irresistible. Anyone who - that's pretty attractive,
Isn't it. I mean...
BRADLEY: (Voiceover} Only a few weeks after getting the Oscar for that
role, Dench learned her husband was very sick.
BRADLEY: You were here in New York when you learned that he...
Dame JUDI: Yes.
BRADLEY: ...had cancer. It was a very difficult time for you. I mean, this
was a wonderful play...
Dame JUDI: Yes.
BRADLEY: ...the wonderful success, led to the Tony. We wanted to talk
to you then and you weren't - you didn't want to talk. And it's still difficult,
huh?
Footage of Dench working on Bond
film
BRADLEY: (Voiceover} Williams died last year, and since then, Dench has
taken solace in her work. She's made three movies in under a year, and is
now working on her fourth James Bond thriller, in which she plays Bond's
boss, the British spy chief "M."
BRADLEY:
The-the Bond movies: Why do them? -
Dame JUDI: Why do them?
BRADLEY: Mm-hmm.
Dame JUDI: Well, wouldn't you want a huge audience of dumbstruck
eleven-year-old boys to-to follow you about?
BRADLEY: But given your stage experience, you didn't sort of look down
on it?
Dame JUDI: Oh, I wouldn't dream of doing that. I wouldn't look down on
anything.
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) In person, Dench is unpretentious and
approachable. To the world, she may be Dame Judi Dench. To
the crew, she's just plain Judi. But all of that disappears when she becomes
the character on screen, as here, in "Iris."
Excerpt from "IRIS"
BRADLEY:
You reveal the character often with just a look,
the face, the eyes, sometimes without saying a word.
Dame JUDI: It's not what you say, it's - it's what goes on
between the lines. It's - it's the thoughts. And on film, what is so wonderful
is that if you get the thoughts in the right order and-and up front there, the
camera will pick up on them.
Footage of Dench window
shopping
BRADLEY:
(Voiceover) But there's a side of Dame Judi that might seem surprising, given that she's had such a successful career on stage and
television and now in film, and that's her chronic insecurity. Despite her
almost 44 years of uninterrupted work, she's still afraid she may never get
another job.
BRADLEY:
Do you still think that there may not be a next one?
Dame JUDI: Yes. Perhaps I need that kind of terrible fear to be pushed
right to the edge in order to fall off. Who knows?
BRADLEY: After an Oscar and a Tony and...
Dame JUDI: Well, that doesn't make any difference, does it?
BRADLEY: Oh, sure it does.
Dame JUDI: No, it doesn't. It does if you're 20s and 30s and perhaps
early 40s. But after that, it-it becomes more difficult to cast you.
BRADLEY: What is it like aging, for you, as an actress?
Dame JUDI: He-hell. What's it like for anybody aging? Awful. There's
nothing good to be said at all about getting old.
BRADLEY: Well, it's better than the alternative.
Dame JUDI: I suppose so. That's a very good way of looking at it.
December,
2001 "IRIS" Premiere in NYC
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Despite what she says, Dench makes 67 look pretty good. And she's already got television and theater projects lined up
through next year.
BRADLEY:
You still have to be having a lot of fun.
Dame JUDI: Oh, do-don't for a second think that I haven't had fun doing
it, and have fun doing it.
At 1999
Tony Awards with daughter, Finty
Dame JUDI: (Voiceover) And I'm jolly pleased to have got it, and had it.
And I wouldn't exchange it for anything.
|
