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Dame Good Show - How Judi Dench became Britain's biggest female movie star At the age of 67, Dame Judi Dench is in the form of her life. Yet it seems some people can't handle her success. David Barnett profiles the multi-award winning actress. With enemies like Minnie Driver, Judi Dench doesn't really need friends. But she's evidently got them. No sooner had Ms Driver uttered her ill-advised comments about Dame Judi in an interview on American television, than the entire British nation leapt to the defence of one of our best-loved and most prolific actresses. In fact, many people probably didn't realise just how well-loved and prolific Dame Judi actually is until Minnie Driver's pop at her. Since then, she's hardly been out of the news, with her latest movies Iris and The Shipping News wowing them at the box office, her nominations for Baftas and Screen Actors' Guild Awards, and a clutch of honorary degrees and city freedoms. Not bad for that "plain" pensioner from York who drew the ire of Ms Driver for the crime of not being Hollywood-beautiful. The young British actress, now relocated to the States, commented: "In England we have some of the plainest actresses in the entire world as our greatest stars. You can have Judi Dench, a small, round middle-aged, lovely mothering-type, playing Cleopatra. Here in Hollywood she would melt into the crowd." Of course, Minnie Driver was quick to clarify her comments. What she meant, obviously, was "the notion of the way in which one looks, especially in Hollywood, as actresses get older the parts dry up. They just do, it's a fact of life..." And she went on and on... During the initial outburst and then the furious back-pedalling, Dame Judi maintained a dignified silence. It would be wickedly pleasant to picture her reading the comments in the day's papers and wondering aloud just who this "Minnie Driver" was and what films she'd been in. But the general consensus is that Dame Judi Dench is far too nice a person for cattiness like that. Not that she's afraid of taking the less-than-easy path, however. You only need to look at the exhausting and varied list of roles she's taken on to see that. From the aforementioned Cleopatra, through the major principals in most of Shakespeare's canon, via much-loved gentle TV sitcoms like As Time Goes By and A Fine Romance, to the first female incarnation of James Bond's boss 'M' in Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough, and then classic performances in award-laden movies like Mrs Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, A Room With A View, and this year's big hitters, Iris and The Shipping News. Any profile of Judi Dench, who was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1988, is in danger of becoming just a list of movies, plays and TV shows, so massive is her body of work. Ironically, the rest of the nation's pleasure at watching her perform is not something she shares. She says: "I just don't enjoy watching myself on screen. I haven't seen A Room With A View, A Handful of Dust, or Chocolat. It all just looks the same to me." Even with her mantelpiece groaning under the weight of Oscars, Baftas, Golden Globes and whatever else they hand out for quality in movie acting, Dame Judi still remains loyal to her first love, the theatre. Born in 1934, she began performing Shakespeare while at school, and taking part in York's famous Mystery Plays. Her initial ambitions to be a painter or stage designer were blown away when she visited Stratford to see Michael Redgrave in King Lear, and her life's path was set. After training, she worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Old Vic, garnering high praise for a variety of roles including Sally Bowles in the London premiere of Cabaret. She says: "The thing about theatre is that you can go on at it until you get better. Sometimes, of course, you get worse, but you can go on. I'm uneasy about the kind of crystallisation of performance in films. Once you've done it, that's it; it's there and it's like something in formaldehyde for me. "But in theatre, of course over and over again you have more chances to get better at it. There are nights - and I'd say I've only had about four of them - when you think, 'That is the best I can do with this play to this point, that's the best performance we've given of this play, and that's the most I can do'. And then the next night you've got to do it better than that. "The audience is yet another dimension which you have to incorporate. That's the excitement of theatre; we need an audience. If the audience didn't make a difference, I'd be at home with my feet up." Or to put it another way: "Pity the poor soul who has to argue that theatre is dead while Judi Dench is standing by!" That was from the New York Time's Ben Brantley, who went on to describe Dame Judi as "a short, rather square-shaped woman with a puckish face," pre-dating Minnie Driver's storm by a couple of years. However, he did qualify his comments by adding of her: "Who, you would swear, is the most ravishing creature you have ever laid eyes on." During her time honing her craft with the Old Vic, Dame Judi became firm friends with another much-loved British actress and fellow Dame, Maggie Smith. The pair met at the theatre, where they shared a dressing room, and went on to act together in movies A Room With A View and Tea with Mussolini. Dame Maggie recalls: "It was the beginning of a great friendship but what I remember most was all the laughter. "When we were making A Room With A View we laughed and shrieked so much I think we must have unnerved directors Merchant and Ivory. I think they were really appalled. "During Tea With Mussolini we played Scrabble, drank and behaved badly again. The Italian film crew just thought we were more peculiar than the people we played in the film." Also in Tea With Mussolini was Dame Judi's husband Michael Williams, who died last year just a month ahead of what would have been the pair's 30th wedding anniversary. When he fell ill with lung cancer, Dame Judi cancelled her engagements to be with him, until he died in January 2001. It's perhaps bittersweet for her that in the year since his death, her fame has increased phenomenally, with Hollywood finally waking up to her talent. Dame Judi also starred with Michael in one of the best-loved TV shows of the 1980s, A Fine Romance, and from 1991 she starred with Geoffrey Palmer in As Time Goes By. The ongoing story of a middle-aged couple who rekindle their teenage romance is set for a revival this year, with the ninth series about to go into production. It's one of those famous movie-land factoids that Dame Judi Dench won an Oscar in 1998 for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love when she was on screen for a total of just eight minutes. An eight-minute performance, however, is not a sign that she's slowing down, even though she's now 67. After the release to critical acclaim of Iris, her portrayal of novelist Iris Murdoch, and the adaptation of the E. Annie Proulx novel The Shipping News earlier this year, she is also currently working on her fourth appearance as M in the next James Bond film, alongside Pierce Brosnan, and will also appear as Lady Bracknell in a lavish big-screen version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Add to that her recent award of Honorary Freeman status by her home city of York, the honorary degree she's to receive from the University of Leeds this summer, and the fact that she was asked by the families of the British victims of the September 11th terrorist atrocities in New York and Washington to lead a service of remembrance in Westminster Abbey. So, "small, round, middle-aged, lovely and mothering-type" she might not argue with - after all, she did initially resist that Cleopatra role that drew such scorn, describing herself as "a menopausal dwarf" - but as for "melting into the crowd?" Forget it. It seems that as time goes by, it's all onwards and upwards for Dame Judi Dench.
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