|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Mrs. Henderson
Presents |
|
||
|
DVD
Video Clips / Screen Captures
Amazon.com Movie Showtimes
Articles / Interviews / Reviews Golden Globe Nominations SAG Award Nomination BAFTA Award Nominations 78th Annual Academy Awards 2006 Mrs. Henderson Presents by John Simon -- Broadway.com Online DVD Review The Weinstein Company -- DVD Released April 18, 2006 As released on DVD by The Weinstein Company, Mrs. Henderson Presents is a pleasant, lightweight entertainment. Literately written by Martin Sherman (author of Bent) and ably directed by Stephen Frears, the film is a stylishly tongue-in-cheek British evocation of old-style Hollywood musicals. "Inspired" as it says, by actual events, it tells of London's Windmill Theatre, which alone remained open during the Blitz, bringing cheer to civilians and soldiers on leave through some of the city's darkest hours. Its five continuous daily shows could, thanks to being below street level, defy the aerial bombardments. Even a very near miss proved scarcely more disrupting than a white mouse, allegedly released onstage by a prankster, causing the nude living statues to scamper off. Ah, nude girls! The theater was owned by a rich widow—the heroine here, Laura Henderson—who ran it in conjunction with an experienced showman, Vivian Van Damm, to whom she eventually bequeathed it. And yes, this was the first time in England that, during the Windmill revues, nude girls in immobile artistic poses were permitted by the Lord Chamberlain, presumably as morale boosters. Around these facts, the film spins a fairly conventional but ingratiating story, interspersed with amiable vaudeville routines and nicely sung and choreographed quasi-period song and dance numbers, including charming pastiche music by George Fenton. The constantly sparring but basically affectionate Henderson (Judi Dench) and Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) evoke memories of those '30s and '40s American movie musicals, as does a somewhat sketchy love affair between a showgirl and a soldier. Andrew Dunn's cinematography should not go without mention. Yet what truly lifts the film above the routine is the performance of Dame Judi Dench. Though Hoskins and the rest—notably Christopher Guest as a Lord Chamberlain twisted around Laura's pinkie—do fine work, it is the great, shining-eyed actress who deploys a special denchantment. The very title of John Miller's excellent biography, Judi Dench: With a Crack in Her Voice, pinpoints one of her fortes: a voice that can go from silken soprano to corrugated contralto in a trice, always to sound dramatic effect. Next, a face that without being glamorous has a comforting, foursquare openness, and which Dench can totally transform from expression to expression with utmost ease. And each expression really counts, whether it tickles your funnybone or skewers your heart. But the most marvelous transition is Judi Dench's smooth progress from sexy ingénue through mature actress to benevolent grande dame without a hiatus, with assurance and endurance very few can match. Of her first professional appearance in 1957, as Ophelia to John Neville's Hamlet at the Old Vic, Kenneth Tynan wrote, "The Ophelia, Judi Dench, is a pleasing but terribly sane little thing." And sure enough, she has parlayed that "terrible sanity" into becoming the sanest, the least actressy, of our era's great English actresses. In her autobiography, Vanessa Redgrave recalled her classmate Judi Dench at the Central School of Speech and Drama as already "confident enough to speak in her own voice." That voice has since enriched the world's screens and stages in all its cracked magnificence.
Los Angeles Times Calendar -- Oscar Section --
Also for your enjoyment ...
Best Actress Cookies !!! Thanks to Connie E, USA, for scanning and sharing this
Battle of the Brits
The Telegraph -- Calcutta, India -- February 27, 2006 Two Brits are up for the coveted Best Actress award — Kiera Knightley for Pride & Prejudice and Judi Dench for Mrs Henderson Presents. Here, Deborah Moggach, the screenwriter of Pride & Prejudice, and Iris director Richard Eyre put their crosses in the box. Richard Eyre for Judi Dench As an actress, Judi Dench is luminous. It’s difficult to pin her down but I would say that her most defining characteristic is that she manages to be authoritative and witty at the same time. That is absolutely integral to her allure. To be such a clear authority figure and to still retain the ability and the power to touch your heart, it’s an incredibly difficult trick to pull off. Judi does this better than anyone else; I would say she is uniquely capable of it. Even when she’s playing a role such as Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love there’s a kind of roguishness, a larkiness to her, that’s irresistible. There is forever a twinkle in her eye. I’ve just finished working with Judi on a new film, Notes on a Scandal, from the novel by Zoe Heller, with Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy. But I’ve worked with her before many, many times on the stage and on film Iris, for which Dench won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and her methods and her abilities are exactly the same in both mediums. She doesn’t age as an actress; when you think about it, she has been at the peak of her career for about the past 50 years. It’s difficult to do her credit properly without turning her into a dreary shopping list, but Judi is incredibly direct and honest, she works very hard on the set, she’s loyal and diffident, she completely and utterly lacks airs and graces of any kind, and I think this is because her passion is consuming. In Mrs Henderson Presents I thought she was magnificent. She so clearly exudes a sense of joy in the role, and what struck me again and again was the wit she managed to convey in her characterization. She also has incredible control, but what you see on the screen is just her joy and her wit. Of course she ought to win the Oscar, but I don’t think she will — I think Reese Witherspoon will get it for Walk the Line. But of course it ought to go to Judi. It isn’t even a question. Click on the link above to read about Kira Knightley A Special Thank You to Ginny A, USA, for sharing this with us
Entertainment Weekly -- Best Actress Section
by Whitney Pastorek Within the massive coconut cream pie that is Mrs. Henderson Presents, there is a moment when Dame Judi Dench stands before her mirror, clad in a loosely tied dressing gown, and performs a short, sultry, entirely unabashed fan dance in the darkness of her bedroom. When the dance ends, she stares into the glass — her gown slipping from one pale shoulder — and her blue eyes burn with heartbreak. She is ravishing, and it's almost too painfully private to watch. Though it lasts only seconds, that scene suggests the presence Dench has brought to movies over the past 40-plus years, a presence so strong that Oscar once rewarded her with a Best Supporting Actress statue for just eight minutes of work (playing Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's Shakespeare in Love). No such time-card controversy here — in the title role, Dench steams through Mrs. Henderson Presents like a tiny upholstered battleship. Based on true events, it's the story of a wealthy widow who opened a burlesque theater in London's West End during World War II, and it allows plenty of opportunity for Dench's intelligence, wit, and self-confidence to shine. But Dench is also smart enough to know when to let vulnerability seep through, and it's in those flashes of uncertainty and grief that her Mrs. Henderson is most impressive. Anyone can act sad — it takes a master like Dench to find the sadness in a snappy retort. Of course, the practical Dame herself would probably tell you that all this awards hoo-ha is nonsense, even as she's staring down the barrel of her fifth Oscar nomination and possibly her second win. ''I just want to go on being employed,'' the 71-year-old actress told EW last year. At the very least, that shouldn't be a problem.
Daily Variety -- January 27, 2006
From the section on the SAG
Awards, the article was called "Motivation". Thanks to Connie E, USA,
for scanning and sharing this Oscar Nomination -- Best Actress -- January 31, 2006
BBC Online Article
-- includes a
BBC Online Audio Interview
Click here to listen to the WAV Audio Clip of the interview with Dame Judi (3:38 Min)
Note: When asked if she'll
be attending the awards ceremony on March 5th, Dame Judi said Dame Judi Dench, Keira Knightley and Rachel Weisz are leading a strong set of UK contenders for 2006 Oscars. Dame Judi and Knightley are up against each other for best actress - Dame Judi for Mrs Henderson Presents and Knightley for Pride and Prejudice. Weisz is nominated for best supporting actress for UK thriller The Constant Gardener, which is also shortlisted for the best adapted screenplay Oscar. Dame Judi has her fifth Oscar nomination for playing the theatre-owning heroine of Mrs Henderson Presents. "It's absolutely wonderful! I'm absolutely thrilled," she said. "It is great to have this kind of recognition. "I'm so happy to be nominated for something I loved filming every single day." Dame Judi and Knightley compete against Walk the Line's Reese Witherspoon, Transamerica's Felicity Huffman and North Country's Charlize Theron in the best actress category. Best costume design
The Oscars Ceremony is Sunday, March 5th -- Full list of nominations
BAFTA Nominations -- 2006 Dame Judi for Best Actress in a Leading Role
British actress Judi Dench holds a bunch of flowers after she won her 11th British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA) nomination from the British film industry for her part in 'Mrs Henderson Presents' in central London on Thursday Jan. 19 2006. (AP Photo/Yui Mok/PA)
Dame Judi said she was "very pleased" to receive her 10th Bafta film nomination, adding that making Mrs Henderson Presents had been "hugely good fun". "I knew I wanted to tell the story because I knew about Vivian Van Damme and the Windmill, but I didn't know about Laura Henderson," said Dench of her role as the woman who brought nude theatre to London. "And then it was working with Bob Hoskins, who I had never worked with before - except radio. It was like being given a wonderful meal - full of the things you love most." Original screenplay -- Mrs Henderson Presents - Martin Sherman The Anthony Asquith Award
for achievement in film music -- Costume design -- Mrs Henderson Presents Awards Ceremony to be held on 19 February at the Odeon Leicester Square, central London
These photos are exclusive to this website. "Oscar Portfolio" from
V Magazine
-- February 2006 ... publication of Daily Variety
Thanks to Connie E, USA, for scanning and sharing these
The It Girl Backstage.com Online Article -- January 09, 2006 -- By Dany Margolies Judi Dench has got the "it" factor--the magnetism that draws the audience to her and to her characters, the quality that makes everyone who speaks of her say she's their favorite actor. But ask her to explain what "it" is and how to get it, and she seems as mystified as the rest of us. It's luck, she insists--getting into a good drama school in England, working with respected directors, coming to film and television "late" in life rather than being a skyrocketing starlet who burns out early. She came to the notice of Americans in A Room With a View (1985), playing the flamboyant novelist Eleanor Lavish so expansively that it took the likes of Maggie Smith playing opposite her to keep Dench from stealing the film with the tiniest of roles. Another brief portrayal caught the attention of Academy voters and won Dench a best actress in a supporting role Oscar: that of the trenchant Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. Oscar noms followed for her work in Chocolat; as the sensual Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown; and as the adult Iris Murdoch in Iris, the story of the novelist who developed Alzheimer's disease. Last year she again worked with Smith; they starred in Ladies in Lavender as elderly sisters who take a shipwrecked young man into their home, Dench's character developing a fascinating love for the stranger. Currently she is onscreen in Mrs. Henderson Presents. "Inspired by true events," it recounts the founding of London's Windmill Theatre, which entertained wartime London all through the night with vaudevillian acts and tableaux of naked girls. Dench plays Mrs. Laura Henderson--newly widowed, upper class, fulgent with ideas and energy. In some ways it's her best work yet, combining the qualities that we admired most in her previous portrayals--sturdiness, humor, wit--but adding new sadness at the recent loss of Laura's husband, old wistfulness at the loss of her son, a deluded confidence, and a large measure of feminism. First Her Fear Dench has an impeccably classic pedigree. She attended London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Immediately before graduation she earned acceptance at The Old Vic theatre, where its then--head Michael Benthall cast the unknown young Dench as Ophelia. Since, she has performed Chekhov, Ibsen, and the entire Shakespeare canon, onstage and onscreen, under the direction of Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn, and John Barton, among many others. She created the role of Amy in David Hare's Amy's View, which played the West End and Broadway. She has had two long-running television series: A Fine Romance and, currently in reruns on PBS, As Time Goes By. So it's unimaginable but true that she dares not teach, that she relies heavily on her directors, and that she suffers mild stage fright--which she says is essential to a performance. As for teaching, she says, "I would simply die of fright." But, she adds, "I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it." Dench says she learned from watching other people. Names that pop quickly to her mind when asked how she learned film acting are Jim Broadbent, with whom she starred in Iris, and Kevin Spacey, with whom she starred in The Shipping News. "Really classy actors," she says. She also says her directors are vital to her performances. Notes from them are "life blood" to her. "I need a director terribly badly," she says. "I wade about in mud until I get somebody to give me a hand through it." She tells her directors, "Tell me to go on until I get it to what you call right. Nag me to get it right." And still she'd offer her ideas to her director, "Because that's the way we work now. It's a process." And then she lets it happen. "And if the director says, 'More of this,' or 'More of that,'--it's like making a cake without a recipe," she explains. "Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are--maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right." As part of the process, she likes to incorporate design in developing her characters. "I trained as a designer, so I'm always terribly keen about what I'm going to look like," she says. "I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right." But somehow fear creeps in. "Always," she says. "The more I do, the more frightened I get. But that is essential. Otherwise why would I go on doing it?" The fear may come from her own belief that she doesn't know how to play the part, that her performance is not quite ready, that she wants a particular night to go well because someone special to her is in the audience. And of course she's "gone up" onstage. "Oh, ya!" she exclaims. "First night in [Eduardo de Filippo's] Filumena, with Michael Pennington, I had a whole list of Italian towns to say. And I completely dried on them and came out with a lot of Italian food. And he also went completely awry. One night in The Importance of Being Earnest I cut all the bits about the handbag, and a woman wrote to me and said, 'You've ruined my Christmas.' But mostly I see the absurdity of it, and I laugh uncontrollably. I've got myself into such trouble." She refuses to conquer her stage fright. At least it's not debilitating. "Not yet," she quips. "But, oh, God, I have the fear. I wouldn't be without it. It makes me laugh. The fear tips over, and I become hysterical. And you get on because you have other actors who are in the same position." Then Her Courtesy While she was in school she saw "every single play in London." That way, she suggests, actors can see what works and what doesn't. She tells young actors, if they're going to appear at a theatre, to see the production playing before yours. "You get the measure of the theatre that way, you get the amount you have to project," she says. "Just before I opened in Cabaret, I was taken to The Desert Song, at the Palace Theatre. And the night before I had my audition at The Old Vic, I went to see Two Gentlemen of Verona. I saw Barbara Jefford there. And the next day I knew exactly the kind of right amount to project." As for that audition, Dench remembers it in vivid detail--down to the yellow dress she wore. She expected to earn a walk-on role. She did Miranda's monologue from The Tempest; but Benthall immediately asked her to learn Ophelia's speech, "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" for the following day. She returned, did the scene, and remembers being asked to let her upswept hair fall. "You were called 'Miss' or 'Mister' then," she recalls. "'Miss Dench,' he said. 'How tall are you?' I said, '5-foot-2.' He said, 'I'm going to take a huge risk. I'm going to cast you as Ophelia, but you are not to tell anybody.' I told my parents, that's all. And that was my first job. I nearly died of fright. And I'd gone [on the audition] with an actor friend of mine who'd been at Central before me and was in The Vic. He said, 'Did you get in? Are you going to walk on?' And I had to say, 'Yes.'" She indeed had walk-on roles in other productions in rep that season, as well as Maria in Twelfth Night and Juliet in Measure for Measure. Dench recalls getting terrible reviews, called notices in Britain. "I don't care," she says. "I learned a huge amount. It was very good to get notices like that." She admits to no longer reading them. But early on she cried over them. "It was good to learn so early. They're not going to be kind to you. You have to do it and get on, and then gulp down and get better." So we're back to that "it" factor, that watchability. "What is it?" she wonders. "If we knew that we could say straightaway to young people, 'Don't you do it [act]. You do it. Not you. You.' But we can't do that, because we don't know. That's what's so exciting. And then you can get somebody who hasn't made much of an impression who suddenly does a part, and you jump out and think, 'Where's that person been?' What's it to do with? I don't know. Luck. Luck finding the right part, the right director, being in the right place at the right time." As actors of her generation have said, the young generation hasn't had the extensive early experience in theatre as preparation for a career. "We had reps to go and make blunders in," she says. "But, my goodness, there's talent around. Crikey. I was bewitched by Keira Knightley." The young actor stars with Dench in the current remake of Pride & Prejudice. Dench won't predict who will take her place in the next generation. "And they won't take our place; they'll be their own people," she says gently. January 6, 2006 The Screen Actor's Guild Nominations Outstanding Performance by
a Female Actor in a Leading Role Dench bares her talent as eccentric Mrs. Henderson Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Senior Movie Writer -- San Francisco Gate Online Review Saturday, December 24, 2005 Dame Judi Dench relies on a bit of stage business in "Mrs. Henderson Presents" left over from her life in the theater. Every time her free-spirited title character makes a shocking pronouncement, Dench stops as if to add a silent ta-da. Her momentary pause is especially effective when the f-word tumbles out during one of Laura Henderson’s many impassioned speeches. There really was a Mrs. Henderson, an upper-crust Brit who, bored to death by widowhood, buys the shuttered Windmill Theater in the West End in the late 1930s and produces London’s first nudie revue, an already embedded naughtiness in Paris. Eccentrics are a specialty of Dame Judi’s, and she concocts just the right ? blend of noblesse oblige and derring-do. Her performance is simultaneously broad and intimate -- showing us glimpses of the demons driving Mrs. Henderson -- and is worthy of Oscar consideration. Although not always up to Dench’s dazzling star turn, the movie is well crafted and draws you into the fascinating lives of several of Mrs. Henderson’s contemporaries, key among them Windmill’s manager, Vivian Van Damm, played with brusque authority by Bob Hoskins. He and Mrs. Henderson fight over everything. Gradually she develops a crush on her employee. Dench is heartbreaking showing her character’s hurt feelings at the discovery that he’s married. "Mrs. Henderson Presents" has an old-fashioned feel, as if it had been made in the period of its setting. I mean this as a compliment. It’s sure to appeal to those whose TVs are permanently turned to Turner Classic Movies. Director Stephen Frears, whose eclectic resume includes "My Beautiful Laundrette," "Dangerous Liaisons" and "High Fidelity," brings great detail to recreating England right before and during World War II. The country is still suffering through the Depression when Mrs. Henderson is overcome by the entrepreneurial spirit, and there is no lack of women willing to shed their garments in return for a steady salary. An innocence and wry, gentle humor run through the movie. There’s quite a bit of nudity, but it’s portrayed almost antiseptically, like viewing a Raphael or Botticelli. Indeed, in order to pass muster with London’s designated censor Lord Cromer (the usually funny Christopher Guest, playing it straight as a proper Englishman), Mrs. Henderson has to agree that her girls will stand utterly still on stage, like a tableaux. At lunch, the lord -- whom she has known since he was a child and dismissively refers to as Tommy -- brings up a concern about revealing their private parts or as he calls them "the midlands." She assures him the lighting will be so subtle nobody will see anything and that anyway "we’ll hire a barber," a line deserving of the pause Dench follows it with. During a rehearsal, the performers are instructed to disrobe for the first time. They announce they’d feel more comfortable if the male stagehands and Van Damm take their clothes off as well. So everybody goes the Full Monty, Hoskins included. (As an executive producer on the film, he can hardly claim he was forced into it.) Mrs. Henderson chooses this moment to walk in, stares briefly at her manager’s midlands and deadpans, "I see you are Jewish, Mr. Van Damm." Another moment of silence follows. The tone of the movie becomes increasingly somber as the war starts, bringing blitzes to London. The revue is performed underground, and Mrs. Henderson convinces the powers-that-be that it offers soldiers a safe haven and a morale boost. Predictably, stage-door Johnnies line up afterward to meet the entertainers, and they ponder offering additional solace to these brave young men fighting for their country. Although technically not a musical, "Mrs. Henderson Presents" is filled with musical numbers, some of them quite accomplished. The loveliest dance is on the roof of the theater when Mr. Van Damm takes Mrs. Henderson in his arms and waltzes her around. Their movements have a subtle sensuality that will not likely be mistaken for a last tango in Paris.
Hot & Bothered: You're Never Too Old... By Andrea Meyer -- IFC News -- December 21, 2005 When the newly widowed Mrs. Henderson remarks that she's bored to tears, her lunch guest Lady Conway suggests taking a lover. "I'm nearly 70," Mrs. Henderson protests. "But you're rich," counters her cheeky friend. "The two cancel each other out." Unconvinced, Mrs. Henderson settles for the next best thing: a hobby. After dabbling in charity (it's a yawn) and needlepoint (a snooze), Mrs. Henderson does what any rich, energetic, old broad (with a splash of the visionary in her) would do. She buys the out-of-use Windmill Theater and sets out to revolutionize the London stage by putting on a vaudeville in which women appear stark naked. Stephen Frears' deliciously snappy "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (in theaters December 9), stars Dame Judi Dench as the real-life theater maven and Bob Hoskins as Vivian Van Damm, the man she hires to run the place. Hot, nasty sparks crackle between this odd couple — so much so that Van Damm initially turns the job down, until the smooth Mrs. Henderson bribes him with total creative freedom, an offer no producer can refuse — even if it means having a ball-breaker in floor-length mink as a boss. After a few rounds sparring with this stout, brassy younger man, Mrs. Henderson realizes she's in love with him. While he's married to another woman and their connection goes largely unacknowledged and unconsummated, the affair is invaluable. It awakens Mrs. Henderson to her sexuality, which she had taken for dead along with her husband and makes the young flesh onstage more alluring. The glowing grand dame teases the dancers about their love lives, even setting her favorite up on a date with a soldier, and in one oddly moving sequence dances suggestively in the flamboyant solitude of her room.
Mrs. Henderson
Presents - IFILM Exclusive: Interview with Judi Dench
(2005) Click here for a better quality version of this Interview
Thanks to Christina Dobrzynski -- Online
PR/Publicity Manager -- Deep Focus -- 12/15/05 KCET Life and Times PBS Interview -- December 2005
Click here to watch the WMP Video Clip
of this Interview
Daily Variety -- Eye on the Oscars:
the Actress
2005 Golden Globe Nominations Picture, Musical or Comedy: "Mrs. Henderson Presents," "Pride & Prejudice," "The Producers," "The Squid and the Whale," "Walk the Line." Actress, Musical or Comedy: Judi Dench, "Mrs. Henderson Presents"; Keira Knightley, "Pride & Prejudice"; Laura Linney, "The Squid and the Whale"; Sarah Jessica Parker, "The Family Stone"; Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line." Supporting Actor: George Clooney, "Syriana"; Matt Dillon, "Crash"; Will Ferrell, "The Producers"; Paul Giamatti, "Cinderella Man"; Bob Hoskins, "Mrs. Henderson Presents." Golden Globe winners will be announced Jan. 16, five days before polls close for Oscar voters. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 31, and the awards will be presented March 5.
Judi Dench: Haughty, yet bawdy
Thanks to Connie E, USA, for scanning and sharing this LA Times -- CalendarLive Online Interview
The actress' well-practiced range is deftly displayed in two holiday films. 'Mrs. Henderson Presents' JUDI DENCH may be one of the jewels in England's acting crown, but she's down-to-earth and funny. Never, ever call her "Dame Judi." Just plain "Judi" is fine with her. A striking 71, Dench seems to be a force of nature. In less than a decade, she's racked up four Oscar nominations — she won best supporting actress for 1998's "Shakespeare in Love" for her eight-minute turn as Queen Elizabeth — and won the Tony Award six years ago for David Hare's drama "Amy's View." She has also been M, the formidable boss of James Bond, in the blockbuster action-thrillers that starred Pierce Brosnan as 007. Dench currently can be seen as the curmudgeonly snob Lady Catherine de Bourg in "Pride & Prejudice" and as theater operator Laura Henderson in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," a historical drama based in fact, which opened Friday. In the Stephen Frears-directed "Mrs. Henderson," Dench plays the wealthy widow who in the late 1930s bought an old London theater named the Windmill. Knowing nothing about music halls, Henderson hired a colorful character named Vivian Van Dam (Bob Hoskins) to operate it. Their Windmill was successful, but it flagged when other London theaters followed its lead. So Mrs. Henderson decided to turn it into a nude revue. During World War II, it became the only theater in London that never closed — even during bombing raids. It inspired a Hollywood movie in 1945 called "Tonight and Every Night," starring Rita Hayworth. In that version, though, all the chorus girls kept their clothes on. Are you appearing in the new James Bond film "Casino Royale"? Yes. We start in February. Have you worked before with Daniel Craig, the next James Bond? No, but I worked with [director] Martin Campbell. He did the first Bond I was in with Pierce, "GoldenEye," so that's going to be new and exciting. I think he [Craig] is [an interesting choice]. How wonderful for him…. It's a tremendous responsibility. Do you like the chance to play more frivolous roles like M? I love it. It's great fun. It has a huge audience for young men from about 12 to 14. So you get a lot of boys approaching you? Yes. That's the only thing they know me from. They say, "Are you M?" Or "Will you sign a photograph for me?" Or "Are you in 'James Bond'?" It's thrilling for me to say yes. You have both "Mrs. Henderson" and "Pride & Prejudice" out for the holidays. I haven't been able to see "Pride & Prejudice" yet. The film has a different ending here than in England, where it ends with Elizabeth getting permission to marry Darcy. It ends romantically [here], doesn't it? Yes. You need to see Elizabeth and Darcy have a final kiss. No, you don't. I remember my husband [the late actor Michael Williams] saying to me that wearing a high-neck dress at the front with no back is much sexier than wearing a low-neck in front. I think it's a pity to have the T's crossed and the I's dotted. The best word to describe Lady Catherine in "Pride & Prejudice" is "scary." She is scary. She is a very aristocratic lady with a great deal of money who was very aware of the class system. She is a monster. I was surprised watching "Mrs. Henderson" that the Windmill Theater featured nudity. Oh, yes, that was the thing we all knew about it [in England] — the very risqué show that people went to. It got to be very fashionable. It was very beautifully done, not sleazy. But very daring. Several of the performers from the Windmill are still alive. Did you get the opportunity to chat with them? Oh, yes. They are in their 90s. They are absolutely beautiful — each one of them. They are really glamorous. I asked them about [Mrs. Henderson]. She treated them all like daughters, really. She paid for weddings and treats for them and clothes and food. They just became a family. Were you able to discover if Mrs. Henderson and Vivian Van Dam had a love affair? I asked the girls about their relationship. They were circumspect. I don't think anybody ever knew if there was any more between them. [Writer] Martin Sherman so brilliantly left that up in the air, so you don't know. I think that's really good. Had you worked with Stephen Frears before? Twice before. He is adorable, Stephen. He pretends he doesn't know what to do with a scene, but in actual fact he does. You kind of feel if you are on this ship and it's going through very, very stormy water, you would be all right with Stephen. Did you live in London during the blitz? No, we were in Yorkshire. I was just 6 when the war broke out. Were you ever bombed? We used to have lots of sirens and things. I remember the bombs actually hitting one night. Does the Windmill still exist? It's a lap-dancing joint now. I am not so sure if Laura Henderson wouldn't have quite liked that. She might have suggested it!
Judi, Judi, Judi! The Divine Ms. D Delivers
'Mrs. Henderson Presents' 12/9 Alex Bailey -- Newsweek Dec. 19, 2005 issue - A 69-year-old widowed English aristocrat with a tongue as tart as an adder's and a contempt for the stuffy propriety of '30s London that's facilitated by her sense of noblesse oblige, Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) is based on a real woman. Moviegoers, however, will recognize her as a not-so-distant relative of Auntie Mame. How we love these feisty old renegades! Rather than settle into the conventional pastimes of widowhood, the imperious Mrs. Henderson buys herself a theater in Soho called The Windmill, hires old-pro manager Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins)—decidedly not "one of her own"—and comes up with the shocking notion of putting on musical revues that feature live nude girls onstage—in artful tableaux, mind you, with private parts cleverly concealed. Filled with musical production numbers, a hint of a geriatric romance between Mrs. H and Mr. Van Damm and patriotic World War II sentiments, "Mrs. Henderson Presents" is a shameless crowd-pleaser. It's not the sort of movie one expects from Stephen Frears, who's made a fine career ("My Beautiful Laundrette," "Dirty Pretty Things") rebelling against this sort of cozily Anglophilic entertainment. That said, he's damn good at it. As he showed in his stylish "Dangerous Liaisons" and his jaunty film noir "The Grifters," Frears can do flamboyant theatricality as well as urban grit. "Mrs. Henderson Presents," which uses the actual song lyrics from the original Windmill Theatre, set to new music composed by George Fenton, makes one curious to see what Frears could do with a full-scale musical. Screenwriter Martin Sherman is good at writing witty one-liners with a Wildean snap. When you dangle one of these in front of an actor with Dame Judi's formidable technique, the question is not whether she'll knock it out of the park, but how far. Dench, whose movie appearances often come in tantalizing, appetizer roles ("Pride and Prejudice," "Shakespeare in Love"), is here a four-course feast. It's a delight watching her demolish the pomposity of Lord Cromer (a very funny Christopher Guest), the official theatrical censor, whose opposition to her plans she brushes aside with mischievous hauteur. And her odd-couple partnering with Hoskins, whose character hides a few secrets up his natty sleeve, has real charm. Dench carries the movie, which tends to wobble when she's not around. Once Mrs. H gets her show up and running and the war breaks out, the movie loses focus, trying for a stiff-upper-lip pathos it doesn't quite earn. The film takes a slightly contrived detour as the meddlesome widow decides to play matchmaker, setting up a romance between one of her troupe (Kelly Reilly) and a young soldier. There's also a tragedy in our heroine's past that's meant to give emotional depth to her taste for theatrical frivolity. As if it were needed. Frears and Sherman surely know we love these Mame types for their irreverence, not their piety. As long as "Mrs. Henderson Presents" plays for laughs, it's seriously fun.
Liz Smith's Column -- December 11, 2005 AT THE PENINSULA Hotel cafe, 5th and 55th, I had a delightful time with the fabled Dame Judi Dench. Her latest film, "Miss Henderson Presents" opened Friday at both the Angelika and Lincoln Plaza theaters. The date also happened to be Dame Judi's 71st birthday. We had a delicious time laughing, dishing and swapping anecdotes too rowdy for print. Dame Judi is devilish, bawdy but ultimately very beautiful. She proves to us that actresses are not "finished" when they reach "a certain age." She became famous and applauded in her mid-60s for her award-winning films — "Mrs. Brown" . . . "Shakespeare in Love" . . . "Chocolat" . . . "Iris." Now, surely "Miss Henderson Presents" will be on her list of hits. Dame Judi co-stars with the inimitable Bob Hoskins in this funny, touching story of an eccentric rich woman who decides in her widowhood not to collect diamonds or do charity, but to own and restore the Windmill Theatre in London's Soho. The story is inspired by true events of 1937 when World War II was darkening the horizon. There actually was a real Miss Henderson who, knowing nothing of the theatre, hired Mr. Vivien Van Damm (Hoskins) as manager. He invents a new form he calls "Revuedevilles," and business booms. But his endeavor is imitated, and he's back to step one. It is Miss Henderson who suggests that he put naked girls on stage. Never has anything like this happened in England before. London explodes. One gets to see some lovely naked bodies, Judi in gorgeous period dresses and an astonishingly lovable Hoskins. The film is fun, warm, funny and endearing. Thelma Barlow is just grand as a good friend. "I love working with Bob. We did a lot of Shakespeare together on the stage. Most people don't think of Hoskins as a classical actor, but he is just that," sparkles Dame Judi as she sips a glass of bubbly. Movie acting was not always something she was fond of, having become one of England's finest Shakespeareans and legit actresses. She starred as Sally Bowles in the original West End production of "Cabaret." But fortunately for the world, Dame Judi capitulated, and like everything else in her fascinating life, she gives all of her loquacious, vibrant mischievous self to her endeavors. Her next is to be the Bond film, "Casino Royale" starring Daniel Craig as 007. You have already enjoyed Dame Judi as Bond's boss, the secret service chief M in a number films. She is also busy now publishing a photo-book called "Scenes From My Life."
The Insider -- December 9, 2005
Click here to watch a WMP Video Clip of The
Insider -- December 9, 2005
Dame Judi Dench stars in the new film "Mrs. Henderson Presents," about a women who buys an old London theatre and turns it into a performance hall that goes down in history for, among other things, its all-nude revues. Here she mocks a strip tease. (Photo by Newsday/Bruce Gilbert) Fast Chat Judi Dench New York Newsday -- Joseph V. Amodio -- December 11, 2005 On Central Park South, there is the hustle of tourists, the traffic, a whooop whooop from a police siren. But on an upper floor of the Essex House hotel, overlooking the park, serenity reigns: There is a pot of tea, a sofa and a woman of regal bearing. Soft-spoken, but not in a fragile, Spode teacup sort of way. The royal title, bestowed upon Dame Judi Dench in 1988, is a nice perk for the veteran British actress, well-known on stage (she's played Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth), on TV (BBC Britcoms like "As Time Goes By") and in films ("Iris," "Tea With Mussolini," "Mrs. Brown," "A Room With a View"). She's racked up quite a few awards, including Oliviers, Golden Globes, a Tony and a best supporting actress Oscar (as Queen Elizabeth I in "Shakespeare in Love"). This month, she plays the title role in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," a film set in the 1930s and '40s, and based on the odd, heartwarming (and true) story of a widow who buys a derelict London theater and shocks her friends when she produces nude revues. She sat down for tea with television writer and reporter Joseph V. Amodio. Had you heard of the Windmill Theater, depicted in the film? Everybody knew about the Windmill. It was rather a scandalous place, not sleazy but quite risque. They remained open throughout the blitz in World War II. The theater was beneath street level so it was a comparatively safe place to be. Were there air raids in York, where you grew up? One. We sat and listened for doodlebugs - you'd just hear them go whshhhhhh - you'd have that awful gap between the sound stopping and then hitting. I remember that. Remember that pretty well. I don't know how my parents managed. My father being a doctor was given things like rabbits and pheasants . Mother was with the Women's Voluntary Service. They'd go down to the station in York and meet troop trains with huge urns of tea and buns, and I remember her coming back often with tins from Americans or Canadians. There was no label on them. We never knew what they were. You'd just open them and suddenly you'd find - oh, I'll never forget it - pineapple chunks in syrup. We couldn't get that kind of thing. It was incredibly exciting. After playing the classics, it must be a hoot to portray a character like 007's boss, M ? It was Michael , I think, who said, "You've got to be a Bond girl." It's hugely good fun. Hugely. In one scene, I'm in prison and I have a little gadget, and I'm trying to contact James Bond and ... save the world. [She laughs.] The night my family saw it they were on the floor laughing. They said, "If it's up to her, there's not a chance - she'll never save the world." Because, you know, I can't work a bicycle pump. But you can row. That was you actually rowing in "Henderson," yes? Yes. We learned in the lake district, on Ullswater, as a child. My father and brothers taught me. I love it. But I haven't ever rowed in high heels and a fur coat and hat before. Did you identify with Mrs. Henderson's ordeal as a widow? Did you draw on personal memories? Michael died five years ago this January, and the first thing that really struck me about the script was the part about her peeling off from the funeral and just getting into a rowboat and having a real kind of cry where nobody was. I also liked her energy, not wanting to just sit around in a privileged life. Since Michael died I think I've worked constantly. Friends and colleagues are very sustaining. They're the people who get you through it. ... It's no good to be on your own. Are you and Mrs. Henderson alike? I think I have her mischievousness. I love practical jokes. I absolutely love them. You mean THE Dame Judi Dench - really - plays them on people? All the time, I'm afraid I do, yes. Not on a film set, only in the theater. Oh? It's too dodgy on a film set. I'm on shaky ground with filming. In film, you work very, very hard, and you think you've done the scene beautifully and you go home, and either the next day you think, "OH! Good grief! I know what I should've done," or you see the film and think, "Where was that rather good scene?" Well, we know where it is. On the cutting-room floor. But now with DVDs nothing is lost - all those great moments, and the ones you wish would go away - they package 'em all up. It's appalling. Absolutely appalling. There are no secrets left. So you feel more comfortable in a theater. Much. I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again. That doesn't seem very likely. Well, that's very nice of you.
Dame Judi at her comedic best 'Mrs. Henderson Presents' tells the real-life story of a controversial theater owner. By Peter Rainer | Film critic of The Christian Science Monitor -- Friday, 12/09/05 This must be the season for movies featuring indomitable English widows. Last week there was Joan Plowright in "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," and now there's the marvelously enjoyable "Mrs. Henderson Presents" starring Judi Dench. Shortly after her husband's death, to relieve her boredom, Laura Henderson purchases a West End theater, the Windmill. With his cigars and pomaded coif, Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) is the impresario she hires and immediately locks horns with. He wants complete artistic freedom, she wants to meddle. Observing the first round of auditions, she is aghast as one would-be starlet after another is promptly dismissed by Van Damm. (She likens the process to a pagan ritual). After the Windmill's initial success dwindles, she comes up with idea of doing a show in which the girls onstage appear naked. It's wartime in London, and between Blitzes the theater does a thriving business in servicemen. Despite its scandalous reputation, the show itself is relentlessly tasteful, in the manner of '40s Hollywood musicals: In order to stay within the bounds of official censorship, the girls pose decorously as tableaux vivants. They're nudie cuties serving the cause of king and country. Dench's role is so smack dab in her best comic hauteur range that it would be easy to mistake what she does as simple coasting. But though there's real snap and ginger to her presence, the key to the performance is the depth of feeling beneath the imperiousness. Henderson is nobody's fool, but as the film progresses we realize that it is foolish passion she truly craves. She finds it with Van Damm, who is as no-nonsense as she is. (Theirs is a real-life story). Van Damm and Mrs. Henderson are forever fighting each other because, of course, they recognize how much alike they are. Although Van Damm has a wife, his bickering with Mrs. Henderson mimics a marriage in which the jabs are really love pats. In one particularly ripe comic scene, an assistant interrupts the two of them at full throttle and is informed by Mrs. Henderson that "you must never interrupt a perfectly good argument." There are many of those. Screenwriter Martin Sherman is at his brittle best in these exchanges, and director Stephen Frears keeps everything clicking. The film is supremely well crafted: Raucousness and wit slide into sadness, and yet you never feel as if you're being worked over by a bunch of slicksters. Frears, like his actors, understands that high theatricality, especially among show people, often camouflages the deepest emotions. "Mrs. Henderson Presents" is about the exhilaration of a life in the theater - a life lived at full pitch. Grade: A
Dame Judi Dench at the Four Seasons Hotel. (John McCoy / Staff Photographer) Tell her a story ... and make it fun By Evan Henerson, Staff Writer -- San Bernadino Sun Online Interview -- December 8th Rules to live by when
attempting to entice Judi Dench into your cast: Promise her an experience of much laughter no matter how grim the subject might be. No fun means no sale. Sell the director, the writer and the cast Dench will join. If it's a play, all the better, because despite her multiple awards (including an Oscar for "Shakespeare in Love,") Dench insists that she is, first and foremost, a creature of the stage. But above all, approach Judi Dench with a good tale. "Tell me a story," says Dench, who stars in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," opening Friday. "I find that irresistible. That, after all, is the end result: There's the author, and then, sieving it, is the director and the actors bringing it to the audience. "The thing about not reading scripts and my wanting a director to tell me a story is a risk I need to take. I need that real fear. It's like going nearer and nearer to the edge of something. I don't like reading scripts very much. I like it better for someone to just explain to me what it is about this story." It was fellow Brit Bob Hoskins - wearing the hat of both co-star and executive producer - who brought Dench the tale of Laura Henderson and the nude revues of Britain's Windmill Theatre in wartime England. Hoskins figured - correctly, as it turned out - that the lure of getting to dress up in disguise as a Chinese servant and in a polar bear costume would sweeten the deal. "I thought she wouldn't be able to resist that," recalls Hoskins. "I looked at the material and thought, if we can get Judi Dench, we've got a really good film here." The fact that Henderson was the under-the-radar celebrity behind the Windmill's success was a draw as well. Every bit an eccentric, the widowed and wealthy Henderson bought the Windmill and revived 'round-the-clock revue-style vaudeville acts. Once the performances were copied by rival theaters, and Windmill ticket sales started to slip, Henderson borrowed a page from Paris Moulin Rouge entertainment, getting her tableaux girls to perform nude and persuading the Lord Chamberlin - who censored all dramatic works - that the motionless nudes were comparable to works of art. "The Lord Chamberlin was censoring scripts when I first came into the theater," says Dench, whose stage career began in 1957. "(Laura Henderson's nude revue) was kind of a one off. Nobody else got that done. I love the fact that, from the moment he opens the door for her, you know she's going to get her own way, to some extent, if not all. Scheming, impossible. All those things, really. It's kind of a gift." Henderson enjoyed a love-hate relationship with Vivian Van Damm (Hoskins), who she hired to run the Windmill. Banned from the theater, she would wear disguises to sneak in and look after the welfare of the performers. Even amid the din of air-raid sirens, the Windmill was the one theater in London that remained open throughout the war. "It's a story worth telling," says Dench. "It's very courageous and anti-war, I think." Dench, 71, who lives outside of London, recently spent a few days in L.A. to attend the "Mrs. Henderson Presents" premiere and pick up the KCET Lumiere award for excellence in film. Having recently completed the film "Notes on a Scandal" with Cate Blanchett, she'll reprise her role as spy boss M for the latest James Bond film, "Casino Royale." She also appears in Joe Wright's remake of "Pride & Prejudice" as the imperious dowager Lady Catherine de Bourg Next up will be a couple of plays: Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" for director Peter Hall, to be staged in London, and a role in a musical version of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's year-long, "Complete Works" staging of the entire Shakespeare canon. While she'll congenially discuss Mrs. Henderson, Bond or the cinematic liaisons she still hopes to bring about (including a wish list that includes working with director Martin Scorsese and actor Ed Harris), you quickly get the idea that Dench much prefers being in front of an audience to being in front of a camera. This despite the fact that her accolades include four Oscar nominations, nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination. "When she was young - and this may be an ungenerous thing to say - she always seemed slightly uncomfortable in films," says "Henderson" director Stephen Frears. "Somebody said she was too raw and she was such a woman of the theater that it always slightly showed in the films. I may be talking nonsense, but I'd like to think she sort of gave up on films, and of course became wonderful at that moment." For her part, Dench recalls being told that she would never make films. "I don't remember who said it, but I just remember the remark," she says. "Do I remember the remark." She was passed over for a potentially career-altering role in Tony Richardson's film "A Taste of Honey" in the 1960s. Her breakthrough came with former Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein championing her Oscar-nominated performance as Queen Victoria in "Mrs. Brown" (1997), followed by her Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in Love" (1998). By the time she "arrived" in film with the two queen roles, Dench was in her early 60s. "The blessing is you then - if you're very lucky - you work with people who really know the business of filmmaking," she says. "Like Kevin Spacey or Cate Blanchett, who really have got it at their kind of fingertips, who really know the business of it. I just watch them, and I know that thing of 'less is more.' I know that now. And it's something now to do with the fact that I'm so old I can get by with things." A bit on the modest side? Not in the least, insists Dench. "I've figured out what to do so far, but it's always the next thing you come to where the man with the bucket of ice cold water is waiting - whoosh! in your face. That's why you work with directors who know what to tell you to do. They say, 'Do it this way or try that or do it again and again and again.' Like the rowing." Ah, yes, the rowing. In addition to her other exploits, Mrs. Henderson had a penchant for taking a one-person boat out onto a lake. Filmed all at once, that was 30 takes in a single day. "Stephen will tell you I was towed, and I may have been towed in one or two of them," she says, "But I was not towed in the others. I was either going too fast or too slow or the current was carrying me. I was steaming, but I liked it. I liked it very much, because we laughed."
A breast above the rest: 'Mrs. Henderson presents' by Kim Pierce -- Hatchet Reporter -- Issue date: 12/8/05 Dame Judi Dench and nudity are two subjects that have probably never been uttered in the same sentence before. However, in his newest film "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (BBC Films), director Stephen Frears ("High Fidelity") manages to connect the two, with crowd-pleasing results. Laura Henderson (Dench) is a recently widowed woman living in Britain during the 1930s. On a whim, she purchases the abandoned Windmill Theater. With the assistance of theatrical producer Vivian Van Damm, (Bob Hoskins, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), she assembles a cast of eccentric characters lead by Bertie, the charismatic, flamboyantly gay lead singer (cinema newcomer Will Young) and Maureen, the romantically challenged chorus girl (Kelly Reilly, "Pride and Prejudice"). In an attempt to save their rapidly falling profits, Laura and Vivian devise an idea to perform continuous nude reviews in the theater. When the Nazis invade France, the morale of the British troops and the besieged British people is dropped squarely onto the shoulders of the beautiful, scantily clad chorus girls. The computer graphics and special effects are far less than stellar. In the many scenes that occur during the relentless Germany firebombing of Britain, the audience can practically see the green screen being used - reminiscent of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the deck of the Titanic. However, this flaw is the only negative aspect of the film. The chemistry achieved on screen by stars Dench and Hoskins is very powerful, yet frustrating at the same time. The characters are both so strikingly similar that you keep rooting for the two to end up together. They are also at the front of a truly talented cast. A new face for American audiences, Will Young does an incredible job providing the film's comedic relief, while at the same time providing the emotional depth needed in this chapter of Europe's past. Young also takes the helm, singing and dancing on the film's many music numbers. He successfully holds his own against the seasoned veteran Dench. Also not to be outdone is Kelly Reilly, fresh off her appearance as Caroline Bingley in "Pride and Prejudice." She adds a realistic venerability to her normally witty and rather icy character of the lead showgirl Maureen. Finally, the dialogue in the movie is incredible, further enhanced by the stellar timing of the talented cast. No one is safe - the French, the Americans and the even the British stars have no problems poking fun at themselves. The good-humored jabs at the stereotypical British reserve provide many of the biggest laughs throughout the film. "Mrs. Henderson Presents" has one thing that has been missing from many of the recent studio epics: heart. The leading performers and the talented newcomers combine to give witty, courageous performances to reflect this dark period in British history. While it may initially appear to be a chick flick (after all, with the exception of the James Bond series, which Dame Judy film isn't?) it encompasses much more. With the magic combination of tasteful nudity, history and musical numbers, this movie should appeal to a wide variety of moviegoers. "Mrs. Henderson Presents" will be in theaters on Christmas Day.
Judi Dench - Grand Dame of Cinema Source: Edward Douglas December 6, 2005 -- Coming Soon Online Interview If there's an actress who deserves the epithet "living legend," it has to be Dame Judi Dench. Still retaining her beauty at the age of 70, it doesn't seem like anything will stop her, and after four decades making movies, she's earned four Oscar nominations in the last ten years. Many people think that her latest role will earn her a fifth. Dench plays the title character in the new Stephen Frears musical comedy Mrs. Henderson Presents, about a rich widow who decides to use her money to buy a theatre. After hiring the cranky Mr. Van Damm, played by Bob Hoskins, as her theatre manager, she quickly discovers that the theatre business isn't all fun and prestige. Undaunted, she turns the Windmill Theatre into the first continuous musical revue with live nude girls on stage, and it becomes a London hotspot, especially when the city is hit by the German blitz in WWII. ComingSoon.net spoke to the one actress who could probably read the phone book and keep you riveted. CS: Supposedly, you and Bob (Hoskins) chose Stephen Frears to direct this film. How did that come about? Dame Judi Dench: Bob is the producer, so he and Norma Heyman and I met over lunch, and I said yes to the idea after he told me the story. Then, Norma and Bob had a conversation and said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if Stephen did it?" and he said 'Yes' the next day. It was great. Then I wanted to start the day after. CS: And this is all before you even had a script? Dench: Yes, that was before the script came. It was just wonderful. It was everything I expected and more, really, because I knew a little bit about her--I asked around when it arrived--and Martin Sherman is very skilled. He doesn't leave you to do much. If you can learn that script, he's told the story for you. You don't have to embroider it in any way. CS: Had you worked with Bob Hoskins before? Dench: We did "King Lear" on radio with Jon Gielgud years before, and I'd known him a bit. We had an ongoing, very funny kind of relationship, because Billy Connolly told me that his first choice for Queen Victoria was Bob Hoskins. (laughs) They sent me this most wonderful photograph the two of them had taken. Bob looked staggeringly like Queen Victoria. So we've had that kind of ongoing thing. You know people say, "Did you work at the relationship?" No, we didn't work on the relationship. The relationship between us happened anyway, the kind of wanting to bounce off somebody. It's also wonderful to get somebody who's in kind of the same world frame as you. CS: What steps did you take to get into the character and make her your own? Dench: The script, of course, is the first thing you have to go by, and then I talked to lots of people, found relations of hers. I also talked to some of the women--the nudes--who are still alive, and they're in their nineties. Fantastic! One of them, Miss [Doris] Barry, is 91, and she takes a ballet class every morning. It's so glamorous, and they said that she was actually like a mother to them. It was the kind of family that she'd lost after her husband and son, and she created another family for herself, and they said she used to behave unbelievably badly. But also, at the same time, she used to come in and paid for weddings and for dresses, and paid for all sorts of parties for them, and generally looked after them. And all this thing about her getting dressed up and [sneaking into the theatre]…absolutely a fact. She'd got the best makeup man in London and used to slip in--having been banned from the theater--just to check on how they were. CS: It seems like you had a lot of fun with this character. Dench: Yes, well she was a lot of fun! She was outrageous. Stephen liked her because she was so silly; I liked her because she was so mischievous and blatantly rude. I loved it. CS: How delicate a balance was it between making her a flesh and blood character and letting it slip into caricature? Dench: I don't know about that. I would just have to believe in Stephen, and he would tell me. But she was so much larger than life than anything we might know, and so outrageously daring and actually very brave. CS: Did you find any similarities between her and the character you play in "Pride & Prejudice"? Dench: Two monsters? [laughs]. Maybe. I don't think of them as the same though. I think Lady Catherine de Bourg probably was a monster. [Mrs. Henderson] is kind of outrageously open, a fantastically rude woman, you think, but there are lots of those. CS: Did Stephen Frears have you do a lot of different versions of the lines in more subtle and heightened tones that he could choose from in editing? Dench: Usually higher a bit with more joy out of it. You read Martin's script, and for instance when she walks in and sees Lord Chamberlain, you kind of know the moment that she walks in, that he doesn't stand a chance--she's going to get him to say something. Which of course was a considerable thing and why the whole thing happened, because of her relationship with him. Because until then, everything we did was censored. You couldn't appear on stage naked, you couldn't have lines crossed. CS: How was it playing opposite Christopher Guest as that Lord Chamberlain? Dench: Heavenly. It was just heavenly. What a funny man. Very, very funny man. CS: Is this impossible love story between Mrs. Henderson and Vivian Van Damm historically accurate? Dench: I think she wasn't told that he was married, and I think it pissed her off actually, not to put too fine a point on it. And I think she'd gotten deeply involved in him by then, in her own self. I just think they got on frightfully well the first time they met, and they were infuriated--he was deeply infuriated by her, and why ever not? But that's the stuff of love, isn't it. CS: And were you actually wearing that bear costume yourself? Dench: Yes! People say to me, "Were you wearing it?" and why would you think I wasn't? Of course I went up with the Tiger Moth [an airplane of the time], and I kept thinking I wanted to shout out, "I am up there in the air!" CS: So Stephen just came up to you and asked "Dame Judi, can you put on a bear costume? Dench: Nobody called me "Dame Judi," that's the first thing, and I was in the bear costume long before I was asked to be in it. You know, the irresistible thing to say is "Would you do a little dance?" CS: You've been able to find a fine balance between strong and vulnerable in a lot of the characters you play. Can you talk about how you find that balance? Dench: Well it's how it's written, and all you have to do is somehow understand the life she's had. She's been in India with her husband, she's had a very happy marriage with him, and loses her son in the first World War. You know, that would make you pretty vulnerable. In fact, I would have thought too vulnerable to embark on the project she did. Then, you suddenly think, "Christ, she must have been tough," and indeed, she was that, too. She didn't sit back, but spent her money on a project she actually knew nothing about: buying a theater. As her friend said, "I didn't mean you should buy a theater; you can buy lots of jewelry and things." And she said, "Well I bought a theater and now I have no idea what to do with it!" "You should get someone to run it!" And then she's totally absorbed in it. She was really a very remarkable woman in her day. CS: Earlier this year, you were in "Ladies in Lavender" with Maggie Smith, but that didn't get much attention. Was that another labor of love for you? Dench: Yes, it was a labor of love. Charlie [Dance, the director] hadn't made a film before, but we were both in David Hare's play "The Breath of Life," and he said, "I found this short story and I'm going to adapt it and make it into a film." So we said, "yes" and we had a glorious time. It was a wonderful summer, September, in fact. We had a heavenly time doing it. CS: Besides the Bond movies, you've veered more towards period pieces or movies set in the past. Would you ever consider doing something more modern? Dench: I've just done something very modern indeed--I've just done "Notes on a Scandal", which will be out next year. It's Zoe Heller's book adapted by Patrick Marber and directed by Richard Eyre and with Cate Blanchett. CS: But you do enjoy period pieces though, right? Dench: I do, but that's my background, really, being at Stratford. I enjoy all that Shakespeare, but it's really whatever comes along. CS: What periods do you find most interesting or enjoyable? Dench: That's impossible really to say, for me. I just like to be involved in the thing at the time. It's very rarely I've not been involved or not enjoyed the actual period it's in. CS: How do you feel about all of the Oscar talk that's been surrounding your performance in this movie? Dench: Getting the gist of it, you can say. I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other. You've got to somehow stay in a very even keel. If that were to happen [for "Mrs. Henderson"] that would be a very good thing. If it weren't to happen, it's not going to be any less of a good thing, it's just a fact. I just want people to see this and understand the story about this extraordinary woman. I feel very passionate about her. CS: There was a time where you thought you wouldn't make it in film, but now you're on top of the heap and still going strong. Did you ever think this might be the case at this point in your life? Dench: No, I never thought it would end this way. It's entirely thanks to Harvey Weinstein, because "Mrs. Brown" was made for television, and Harvey saw it and presented it as a film. Then, I came over here after a 38-year absence and people asked, "Apart from M, and Mrs. Brown, what have you done?" and I thought, "That's 48 years straight past me!" [laughs]. The theater is the thing I love doing most. CS: So Martin Campbell is back directing Bond, and he's brought you back on as M, even though this is supposed to be a restart. Any idea how that's going to work? Dench: I don't know anything, except that I'm going to be in Prague and the Bahamas. That's all I know. I haven't seen the script.
Thanks to Jennifer J, USA, for bringing this to my attention
Mrs. Henderson Presents AV Club Online Review -- December 7th, 2005 No one does haughty imperiousness like Judi Dench, who slings witticisms from on high like lightning bolts from Zeus, but with a certain bored apathy, as if she can barely be bothered to insult those below her station. In her two bravura scenes in the recent Pride & Prejudice, Dench goes toe-to-toe with one of the most headstrong women in literature and proves a perfectly intimidating match. As a bored and slightly blinkered old widow in Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents, she couldn't be more ideally cast, especially in the frothy opening half, when she boldly sets about reviving a theater in London's West End with just a wave of her hand. When called upon, Dench can also deliver serious gravitas, but after a few reels of pleasantly insubstantial behind-the-scenes theatrics, the specter of World War II is too much for Frears' airy period comedy to bear. The movie seems as closed off from reality as Dench's aristocratic heroine, and the dropping of Nazi bombs pierces its brittle shell. As the film opens in the late '30s, Dench's powerful husband has just died, and she's already grown tired of playing the grieving widow. A friend suggests embroidery as a hobby, but a single pinprick sends her off to a more ambitious endeavor: rebuilding a theatre to entertain the downtrodden masses. To that end, she hires Bob Hoskins, whose brusque temperament and stubborn single-mindedness creates an affectionate friction between the two. They initially open the continuously running "Revuedville"—a musical revue with elements of vaudeville—but when receipts start to sag, Dench retools the show into an all-nude revue. That causes an uproar, of course, with Christopher Guest's snooty Lord Cromer brought in to approve the baring of breasts, provided that they be displayed in tableaux as if in a museum. Poking fun at uptight British civility has long been a monocle-shattering comedic staple, and Mrs. Henderson Presents gets by for a while on its genial naughtiness. But when the war intrudes and Dench reflects on the loss of her son in World War I, the frivolity abruptly ends, and the movie perishes along with it. A stirring speech to the troops seems certain to secure Dench another Oscar nomination, but considering the wispy artificiality that surrounds her, she could just as well deliver it from the award podium.
Dench lights up ‘Mrs. Henderson Presents’Actress becomes a likely best actress Oscar nominee with this performanceREVIEW -- By David Germain -- Associated Press -- Dec. 6, 2005 Judi Dench could sit motionless on an overturned bucket surrounded by dancing emus, bodybuilders juggling small kitchen appliances and a tableau of naked nymphs, and she still would be the most interesting thing in sight. OK, the nude women might occasionally steal attention from Dench, as they do now and then in Stephen Frears’ wonderful comic drama “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” based on the true story of a 1930s British society dame who started a stage revue featuring women in the buff. As she showed again with her few scene-stealing moments in this fall’s “Pride & Prejudice,” Dench is one of the most emotive, dominating actresses on the big screen. A haughty glance, a dismissive flick of her pinky finger, and Dench simply makes everyone around her go flat and fuzzy. Imagine Dench at her most caustically imperious yet crankily lovable for a full film and you’ll have a sense of the enormous entertainment value of “Mrs. Henderson Presents.” Toss in Bob Hoskins as Dench’s blustery friend, foil and straight man, | |||
