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(03/01)
BRUCE WESTBROOK
c.2002 Houston Chronicle
Now that American filmgoers adore Judi Dench - notwithstanding her
long and distinguished career in her native Britain - perhaps it's
time for an update:
Currently she's bossing James Bond around again as chief spy M in
``Bond 20,'' the working title for the next 007 film. It's now
shooting in Europe and scheduled for release in November.
She's also appearing on screen in the title role of ``Iris,'' a role
for which she was just Oscar-nominated as best actress.
Speaking
of Oscars, she is eager to attend Academy Award ceremonies in
Hollywood on March 24.
But her continued success is bittersweet. Her husband of 30 years,
actor Michael Williams, died in January 2001. Although Dench won't be
able to share her Oscar moments with him, and though she's been
nominated three times before - winning for ``Shakespeare in Love'' -
she says she's thrilled just the same.
`It certainly doesn't get to be old hat,'' Dench said on the day she
was nominated, calling from her hotel room in New York. ``It's a
surprise, and I truthfully am as excited now as I've been before.''
She keeps her Oscar ``on a little table in my house'' near London, a
home she shares with her only child, actress Finty Williams, and her
grandson. They moved in together when her husband became ill, and now
they're staying together. Although Dench's career has been rocketing
since Miramax's Harvey Weinstein persuaded her to star in 1997's
``Mrs. Brown'' - for which she earned her first Oscar nomination -
she keeps it in perspective like the veteran trouper she is.
While Dench says work has been ``a tonic'' since her husband's death,
``It's not more important to me now. My family is the most important
thing to me and always has been, and I don't expect that ever to
change.'' Yet Dench, 67, is most grateful for her work and for her
recent successes.
``If you're fortunate enough to do a job that you really love and to
make a living at it, then you're one of an incredible minority, and
you certainly have to be grateful,'' she said.She prefers theater to
film, having performed for years in the Royal Shakespeare Company and
at the Old Vic. ``In England, there's no stigma between actors
working in stage, film or TV,'' she said. ``I think it's called good
luck if you get work at all. But the stage is my medium. You can
always go back the next night and try to get it better.''
She'd have been content if it had stayed that way. ``Then Harvey goes
and blows it,'' Dench said, laughing. Stardom came both through
``Mrs. Brown'' and her first turn as M in 1995's ``GoldenEye.'' ``It
was quite sudden,'' Dench said - and it was vexing in a way. ``After
40-odd years of plays and things, it became, `Apart from ``Mrs.
Brown'' and playing M, have you done anything else?' '' she said.
Yet her rise has meant getting more scripts from which to choose. ``I
don't know that the quality changes, but certainly the amount
changes,'' she said. She credits Weinstein, the man who's
masterminded successful Oscar campaigns not only for ``Mrs. Brown''
but also for her films ``Shakespeare in Love'' (for which she won an
Oscar as Queen Elizabeth I), ``Chocolat'' (for which she was
nominated) and now ``Iris.''''I owe him,'' Dench said of Weinstein.
``I told him that now I'm forced to have `Harvey Weinstein' tatooed
on my bum.''
Weinstein also produced ``The Shipping News,'' in which Dench also
starred. That film, which was not well reviewed and did not do well
at the box office, was shut out in Oscar nominations. Dench was
disappointed that co-star Kevin Spacey wasn't nominated. But she
relished the work, and recalls getting to know triplets Alyssa,
Kaitlyn and Lauren Gainer of Houston, who took turns playing Spacey's
daughter. (Dench portrayed his aunt, Agnis Hamm.)
``They were just enchanting,'' Dench said. ``They came over to see me
in a play in London recently with their mother and father, and I
still couldn't tell them apart. They were so charming and well-
behaved and such good sports.''
Playing beloved British novelist Iris Murdoch was more difficult for
Dench, in part because she was depicting the onset of Alzheimer's
disease, but also because she could take ``no liberties'' with a real-
life role. ``She was so recently in people's minds, and so many
people knew her,'' Dench said. ``My responsibility to her made it the
most difficult part I've ever had to play.''
Jim Broadbent plays Iris' husband late in life, with Kate Winslet and
Hugh Bonneville as the couple in youth. Broadbent and Winslet also
were nominated for Oscars. Dench feels the film's message involves
``how you respond to tragedy. That makes this a film not about a
disease, but something that survives and overcomes it, which is
love.''
She doesn't prefer any particular type of role or story.
``I just
want to play something different next time,'' Dench said. ``Have
different script, will travel. I want something I can learn
through.'' She got the chance last year, making Iris between segments
of ``The Shipping News'' shoot. ``That was tricky. I didn't know
whether I was Agnis Murdoch or Iris Hamm,'' she said with a laugh.
The film version of ``The Importance of Being Earnest,'' in which she
stars with Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon, is in
the can. It's scheduled for release in May. Dench can't talk yet
about the new Bond movie. ``You're not allowed,'' she said. Being the
boss of longtime playboy Bond ``goes down very well with young men
between the ages of about 10 and 13,'' Dench said. ``I think it's
because somebody who is a boss to James Bond becomes a role model.''
But she'd just as soon tread the boards of Britain's theaters, even
if they aren't thriving today. Dench and her late husband didn't
encourage or discourage their daughter's acting ambitions. ``That's
just the way it fell out,'' she said. ``We let her decide.''
She's thrilled that ``Gosford Park'' also was Oscar-nominated, since
her daughter plays ``an upstairs maid'' in the film.
``It's very
true-to-life indeed,'' Dench said of the whodunit set against
Britain's rigid class system of the 1930s. ``It's not that way now,
but indeed that went on.'' In the film, aristocrats are haughty
toward actors. But in 1988, Dench was honored by royalty, being named
a ``Dame of the British Empire,'' an honor equivalent to a male being
knighted.
Oscar voters also tend to show deference to Britain's long acting
traditions. ``We do very well by you,'' Dench said of Brits in
successful American movies. Yet she's never made one with an eye
toward Oscars. ``The job is so difficult to do that it takes up all
my time and energy,'' she said. ``I don't think of it in Oscar terms.
You just want the story to turn out all right.''
Thanks to Jan M.
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