Judi Dench Talking Pictures

She hates the phrase "national treasure",

so how does one describe Dame Judi Dench?

She's been called ridiculously talented, inspirational,

a shining star and a tough old boot.

One of Britain's best and best-loved actresses,

Dame Judi's extraordinary career began in the 1960s when she joined

the Old Vic Company and was immediately recognised as a considerable talent.

However, mastering Shakespeare and the classics wasn't enough.

Judi Dench always craved variety

and here we see her in 1968 captured by BBC cameras as she was

creating the role of Sally Bowles in the original

London production of the musical Cabaret.

I was going to be a designer, put decor on costumes and things

and then... I was quite determined to be that.

My brother was older than me, I was at Stratford at the moment,

he went to Central.

And I suppose I kind of got it like a disease in a way, from him a bit.

So I just, kind of, overnight, thought, "I'll have a go at the other."

I wasn't staged or frightfully burning to...

Mind you, at The Mount, at my school,

I'd had a marvellous teacher called Kathleen McDonald,

who was at the Young Vic School and who was wonderful.

But I didn't take it all that seriously,

I was a, kind of, enthusiastic schoolgirl, do you know?

And the person who really, erm,

really made a big difference, was Dicky Hudd at Central.

In my third year, Dicky Hudd said to me,

"Michael Benthall wants to see you at the Old Vic."

Well, I had a friend who had left Central then

and was walking on at the Vic

and I thought, "How marvellous, this is what I'd love to do,

my ambition was to walk on at the Vic.

And so I went along and saw him and he said,

"Now, I want you to learn this speech from Hamlet...

"of Ophelia."

I did an audition and Michael said,

"I'm going to take the most enormous gamble,

"we'd like you to play Ophelia in Hamlet."

And I just burst into tears, I'm afraid, I made a spectacle of myself.

And he said, "I don't want you to tell anyone, though,"

in fact, I didn't tell anyone for about six weeks

that it was happening.

The younger one is, and the more inexperienced,

the less frightened one is.

I've never been confident, I really get so frightened that

I can't speak before the first night, I get paralysed with fear.

But now I'm much more frightened than I was then, ten years ago.

Much more frightened.

I went up about a film, once,

before I'd ever made a film

and I went into a room and there were

five big men there and they offered me a seat and nobody said anything.

I said, "This time," I thought, "I won't ask any questions,"

so I didn't, and this man looked at me for a long time

and then he took a cigar out of his mouth and he said,

"Miss Dench, you have every single thing wrong with your face."

And I got up and I walked out of the room.

And that was my first year of acting.

And it died hard, I can tell you.

AUDIENCE CHATTERS

I'm more frightened, now.

I suppose it's because one has a line of things behind one,

one has ten years' experience and therefore...

..you feel you've got to progress.

You can't ever stand still, you can't go back,

or at least you hope you won't stand still or go back, so you have...

And also, you're aware of the mistakes that one can make.

It's like building a house of cards.

You know, when you get to the...

Your hand starts to shake when you get up to the top.

I do like the challenge of something new, I mean, that's why

I've always wanted to do a musical and that's why I want to do it.

And everyone, kind of, says,

"Oh, get you," when I say a musical.

but I want to have a go. I want to have a, you know,

great big orchestra and everything and a bit of dancing

and a bit of singing and a bit of acting.

And a chorus, and all.

I long for that.

Because that's a really different thing.

I thought, "Oh, do a musical and a great big overture will strike up..."

There isn't an overture in Cabaret, it's a long roll on a cymbal.

That quest for new challenges would see this acclaimed

stage actress surprise everybody when she decided to tackle

the TV sitcom with her husband, Michael Williams, in A Fine Romance.

The role led to this appearance on the Wogan show,

which kicked off with one of the big questions.

APPLAUSE

They seem to like you and welcome you.

Why Judi with an I instead of with a Y?

Because it's Judith and when I went to a drama school

there was another Judi, as well,

so they decided that they would just knock the 'th' off,

so I became Judi and she was J-U-D-Y.

-And you call your daughter Findy?

-Finty.

-Finty. What's that short for?

That's just a nickname, she is really called Tara.

LAUGHTER

Well, it's a logical conclusion. Yes, quite.

And so we call her Finty.

We thought it was going to be a boy and we called him Finn,

but it turned out to be a girl, so she was nicknamed Finty and that's stuck, now.

So you're married to that fine actor, Michael Williams

and you work together in A Fine Romance.

Is it that you can't bear to be away from each other?

Well, you see, we do like working together

and I do know where he is in the evening, too, that means.

We like working together and I think that, for a lot of actors

and actresses, maybe they don't work so well,

but we seem to and I...

We knew each other nine years before we were married

so we're really old friends.

The cliched question, I mean, when you fall out on the set

or when you fall out at home, do you carry it on to the set or to the theatre...

We've had a couple of tricky times, yes.

We've had a couple of tricky times, when...

I mean, we had a terrible row just before Christmas last year

and it lasted a whole day, the row,

and went on towards the evening and we were both going to

the theatre together to a play, in a play together, Pack Of Lies.

And we got into the car, took a taxi,

and there was ice everywhere in the taxi,

ice on the seats, ice from the ceilings,

and we looked out of the various windows,

although when he looked out that side, I looked out this side

and I thought, "This is going to make a very tricky evening."

And we came to a traffic jam in Shaftesbury Avenue

and still sitting there and still not saying a word,

a woman through the ceiling... Through the window, saw us

and suddenly went, "A fine romance!"

And we took it in turns to go, "Thank you very much indeed."

-It didn't break till the next morning, the row.

-The strain...

-The strain is terrible, isn't it?

-Emotional and thespian.

Do people expect you to be like the character you play in A Fine Romance?

They do expect us to be like that

and they think that our lives at home are exactly like it,

but I think that it's not at all like us,

but I think that the appeal of it,

and we certainly had no idea that it would be so appealing,

the programme, but it's because it is more like real life in that

life is more like having a dinner with somebody and thinking,

"How lovely you are," and you find the spinach on your tooth

or the egg all down your front.

-Yes, it's that identification.

-I mean, that... Yes.

How do you feel, though, you are distinguished Shakespearean actress...

That's a desperate cough you have up there, miss. I know how you feel.

Now, a distinguished Shakespearean actress acting in O'Casey

and marvellous plays, wonderful reviews and yet,

to be best-known for a somewhat trivial television comedy.

Yes, and a lot of people say to me, "Is this the first job you've had?"

So it's very nice to reach an audience who don't want to

come and see Shakespeare and don't want to come and see O'Casey

but do want to sit and see you in their sitting-room.

But don't you feel, "Is this what all my training has been about?"

No, I don't. No, I don't. I like it a lot

because I like to do something that is, that is the most

unexpected thing and it was...

I mean, a lot of people say, "Oh, you don't want to do a situation comedy,"

and I thought, "That's exactly what I want to do."

I mean, the moment somebody says,

"Oh, that's rotten casting for a part,

"she can't play Lady Bracknell," that, somehow, is the one thing I want.

To want to play it.

And when you're playing something comedy like this, they always

say comedy is harder to play than serious stuff, do you find that so?

Well, I laugh more doing serious stuff

-than I do during the comedy.

-Really?

-Yes.

I mean, the serious stuff, when you have to actually be very serious

and something goes wrong, that is the...

I've got myself into serious trouble for that.

Many, many things. I mean, in Mother Courage, which is, like,

three and a half hours of dragging a cart round the station, not many laughs,

and on about the last afternoon, two of the boys who were playing

soldiers, I had to give a drink to and they used to give me money.

And on the last afternoon, because they thought it was so funny,

they gave me, instead of giving me the money,

-they'd given me an American card...

-Express...

-Express, yes.

So I didn't bat an eyelid about it,

but between the two shows, I doctored the drink so that

when they came and asked for the drink and threw it back,

they had half water, half vinegar... cider vinegar.

LAUGHTER

And then, what was wonderful about it, why I...

it actually rebounded on me,

was that they had to actually come back and say,

"We would like another drink," they have to say in the thing,

"We want another drink," and I thought, well, "By all means." Here's the next.

What about films, have you... You don't seem to have done too many?

-No, I don't do it. Well, I'm not asked to do many.

-Why not?

Well, because I'm not what they want to look at.

They just say... Ahh.

AUDIENCE: Aww...

They're not sympathising with you, they're saying, "Shame, shame."

LAUGHTER

Well, I think that sometimes about films,

if you don't go in looking like the person you're meant

to look like in the film, people perhaps don't cast you in that part,

whereas in the theatre, you can fool a lot of people a lot of the time.

You can look taller in the theatre and you can do amazing things

to yourself that makes you actually not look like yourself at all.

And I don't think they like to do that so much in films. They like to get someone who looks...

But, I mean, you like what you look like,

you have no hang-ups about that?

I don't want to even talk about that.

LAUGHTER

Whilst Judi wasn't happy talking about her looks,

she was happy talking about acting to

Roy Plomley for his 1985 programme, Favourite Things.

Nowadays, of course, an actress doesn't work in one medium.

Which medium do you think you slot into most easily?

The theatre, I think, Roy.

I've been asked this question a lot of times and it's only now,

really, having been asked it a lot of times,

that I think it is the theatre,

only because you get more chances to get it right.

Also, this tremendous gift of the audience actually coming

out of their homes and buying a ticket and coming to the theatre

seems, to me, the reward of doing it back to them is very little to ask.

So you certainly declare that acting is a favourite thing?

Yes, acting is a favourite thing and a wonderful way of communicating.

It only... Once, when we were doing Saint Joan at Nottingham,

for some reason the dress rehearsal was delayed

and we all got ready, we were already made up and everything

and we were sitting in the green room, the sun was pouring in through

the window and I suddenly looked round at all these grown people

dressed in knitted chainmail and I thought, "This is absurd!

"I don't know what I'm doing here." But I have to add, also,

that I loved playing it and I was very happy in the production.

But it was an absurdity, suddenly, to see

these people when you could look out and see the ordinary,

-sensible people going about their everyday work.

-Yeah.

But you can always accept your own illusion.

I can't accept my own, but I hope other people will accept it.

And I feel more comfortable when I'm dressed up as somebody else,

being somebody else and talking, so I can't make a speech in public.

If people were to say to me, "If you would come along as so-and-so

and dress up in these clothes and wear a wig

and look entirely different", I could perhaps do a speech,

but I find it difficult to go along as myself.

I don't find this difficult, because I'm talking to you as a friend

and we're having a conversation.

But I find the actual business of making a speech

to a lot of people painfully difficult.

After a strenuous performance, how long does it take you to relax

and get back to reality?

It doesn't take long at all with me.

I find that Michael, when he comes home,

he can't actually go to bed at the same time as I do

because he's on such a high after it that he has to pad about the house,

changing the pictures and pushing the furniture around.

The thing I like best is to do two shows and then come back

and watch the late-night movie. Vincent Price, I like...

You know, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, I love it.

I don't mind how many times I'll see it

but I do find that is the most wonderful way of relaxing.

Yes, having done a couple of performances yourself,

-you now sit down and watch somebody else give one.

-Absolutely,

and have the joy of being able to turn off if I want and go to bed, or...

You know, I'd like to be able to do that sometimes,

during the evening performance... of my own.

Dreadful, of course, if somebody walked out of the theatre,

-that's the one person that you can see.

-Yes.

Yes, there was one moment in The Comedy Of Errors at Stratford

when I didn't have anybody coming to the show that evening

and I was not feeling very much like, I couldn't get the energy together.

So I said to Michael and to Roger Rees and Nick Grace, I said,

"I am doing it for the lady...

I saw a lady, I'm doing it for this lady who is

sitting in green on the second row on the right-hand side."

And I played up a storm until suddenly we came back after

-the interval and she'd left, so...

-Oh, no.

If you had to say what is your favourite thing of all,

what would it be?

It would have to be... If it's allowed, it would have to be that

it isn't a thing at all, it's people that are the most favourite.

Because I, erm...

I, you know,

that thing of sharing jokes or sharing, even, experiences,

or sharing a company together, or whatever, beats anything, really.

Beats pictures, or everything.

This is one of the great things about the theatre,

about show business, about the comradeship.

I think so, and also very much about actors,

because they are not...

they are not bothered about...

colour or creed or age or class or anything.

It doesn't really mean anything.

There's a kind of universal language and that's very important.

Three years later, Dame Judi made a return to the Wogan show,

this time sharing the sofa with another granddame, Margaret Rutherford.

She talked about her debut as

a theatre director for which she blamed Kenneth Branagh.

Yes, now, your debut as director in Much Ado for Kenneth Branagh's

Renaissance Theatre, was that... It must have been a tremendous challenge for you.

Is that something you wanted to do all the time, you've always

-wanted to direct?

-It wasn't at all.

-No.

It was an idea of Ken's

and he came and I thought he was going to ask me

to play a part and he didn't, he just asked, said, "Will you come

"and direct a company and will you do Much Ado?"

So I got the part, the...

the job and the play all, kind of, in one go like that

-and I couldn't say no, could I?

-But do you like it?

-So I did it.

-Do you like directing?

-I like a lot of it.

Ken Branagh says I'm bossy and schoolmarmish when I do it,

but he's drunk with power, Ken Branagh, now, so he would say that.

But, yes, I did like it, I loved it, I loved it.

Do you like bossing people around on the stage?

No, I didn't much like it, no,

but I got quite cross when they did things that I said,

"Please don't do this," and then they come on and do it.

And then you come to something like a first night and, kind of,

wrong stresses go on.

It's like somebody saying, "You've GOT your watch on."

It isn't, "You've GOT your watch on," it's, "You've got your WATCH on."

Yeah. But newsreaders do that all the time, anyway,

-on the television, the wrong emphasis.

-But it's...

So, the headmistress bit, I mean, are you conscious of it in yourself?

No, it's not true. It's just getting a cheap laugh.

-It's just mad Kenneth Branagh, is it?

-It's power-mad Kenneth Branagh.

Yes, it's not true. We had a lot of laughs.

I suppose I was quite bossy, but I learned a lot from it

and I loved working with them all, I'm so proud of them.

They're 15 of the really, the most talented young actors

and actresses and... I would...

Everybody must go and see them at the Phoenix.

And what about you, we've seen you in so many tremendous parts,

I mean, your Cleopatra was tremendously admired,

a lot of what can only be described as unbridled passion on the stage.

-A lot of that, yes.

-Yes.

Much bruising.

Yes, there was a lot of bruising, you heard about that, did you?

Yes, and nearly flying off into the audience a couple of times, yes.

Just saved by the bell, I was.

With that kind of a scene,

I'm just interested in how you would play it,

would that be all meticulously rehearsed and blocked out and everything?

Well, Tony and I found out that when we work together, it was better...

We said to Sir Peter Hall, "It's better if you don't tell us."

To... where the...

"Could we just have these moves very fluid,

"so that I don't know what he's going to do

"and he doesn't know what I'm going to do?" And that's what happened.

So sometimes, Tony would come on from... I'd be looking one way

and he'd come on from here, or vice versa. And so it was very, very exciting.

-Do the roles take you over, I mean...

-No.

-They don't, I mean you don't walk around Sainsbury's as Cleopatra?

-No.

Tricky, actually, tricky shopping.

Tricky shopping would be when you come to play Lady Macbeth round Sainsbury's.

No, no, they don't at all.

But that is, if I may say, that's the thing about you,

that you are...

and I don't mean to patronise,

but a real person in the sense that you'll get these wonderful crits at night

and then bingo, out you go shopping the following...

-Because you're a housewife and mother as well, you see.

-That's it.

-That keeps your feet on the ground.

-It certainly does.

You've often said that you, you're not all that keen on film acting

because you can end up as the face on the cutting room floor

and that you haven't as much control over what you do.

Yes, that's true, I mean, I feel I have no control over

what I do at all on film.

And erm, in fact, I know I haven't.

I haven't seen any of the films I've done.

-Not even...

-Room With A View? I haven't seen that.

No, I haven't seen anything.

-Honestly, you'd like it if you saw it.

-No, I wouldn't.

No, I'd hate it, I expect.

Do you get embarrassed looking at yourself?

Very embarrassed, I don't mind if I'm sitting at home and I can

glance at it, but I get embarrassed sitting with a lot of people looking.

-Well, we'll embarrass you, then.

-Oh, no, Terry, please not...

-I'd love to see this, there's a lovely little piece...

-No!

CHEERING

Here it is, it's coming up now.

One has always to be open, wide open. I think Miss Lucy is.

-Open to what, Miss Lavish?

-To physical sensation.

I will let you into a secret, Miss Bartlett.

I have my eye on your cousin, Miss Lucy Honeychurch.

Oh, for a character in your novel, Miss Lavish?

The young English girl transfigured by Italy.

And why should she not be transfigured?

It happened to the Goths.

Is this...

APPLAUSE

It's a lovely line.

You were just saying that you couldn't see that, anyway,

-because you've forgotten your glasses.

-Yes!

Cinema roles were now becoming increasingly frequent.

But in the early 1990s, Judi bucked expectations

by taking on As Time Goes By, another TV sitcom,

this time co-starring with Geoffrey Palmer.

There wasn't much laughing in Judi's next role,

but it was the one that, in terms of the cinema,

catapulted her into the awareness of international audiences

as James Bond's no-nonsense boss, M.

And then came a lovely role for her, Mrs Brown,

where her portrayal of a grieving

and then smitten Queen Victoria had Hollywood suddenly enthralled.

Here in the studio is Judi Dench, deservedly nominated for her

portrayal of Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown.

Judi, welcome and how did you feel

when you'd heard you'd actually got an Oscar nomination?

It's hard to put into words.

It's hard to put into words what has happened to this film, for me.

As you know, it was made for television,

to go out last Easter on Easter Monday.

And since that, it suddenly,

thanks to Miramax, has...

We've been to Cannes and we've been to...

I've been to New York and Los Angeles and Dublin

and Edinburgh and Glasgow and now I'm going to Los Angeles.

I have a lot of bets against myself going

and I've had to pay up on a few because of the nomination.

What about Mrs Brown, was that an enjoyable experience for you?

It was enjoyable from the second I said I was going to do it

because of Billy, of course and because of John Madden and we'd work,

you know, my calls used to be, like, at 4:45 in the mornings

and you'd get in at about 9, have a bath,

have something to eat and then while you sat listening to Billy

telling jokes, you'd look at your watch, thinking,

"Can I do this on three hours, can I actually play this part

"tomorrow on three hours?" But, you know, no make-up for her, so, erm,

I didn't have that. It wasn't too much of a problem that she

looked pretty stressed in some of the scenes.

It's your first real starring role in a movie, isn't it?

It is, it is.

Because you don't like films much, do you?

I don't know the business of it.

I really rely very, very, very much on the director

as I do in the theatre,

but I'm very, very unsure of myself in the movies, very.

Has the Oscar nomination made any difference, I mean,

are you suddenly much more confident about the movies?

No, it has made me very, very excited

and I'm extremely surprised about it and I shall enjoy every minute of it.

-All that razzmatazz.

-Well, that will be a very,

very great acting feat for me,

is to be able to control myself enough to look very, very calm

and poised that night and not

be over-excited about who I'm looking at.

-You're not starstruck, are you?

-I'm totally. Yes, I love it.

Look at you, I mean, I'm delighted to be talking to you.

Well, I'm delighted to be talking to you, but that's...

I am, I'm afraid, yes.

You make it all sound as if this is terribly novel

but, I mean, you've got the Golden Globe, of course, for the same role.

What do you think of your chances?

I don't expect to win it, I really, genuinely don't.

How can you compare, you haven't even seen any of your rivals' performances, have you?

I haven't, no, it's terrible. I will, though, I will go and see...

Yes, Judi, thank you very much

and all the very best of luck on Monday week.

Thank you very much indeed.

Judi didn't win that year, but she did win the following year.

An eight-minute performance in Shakespeare In Love

resulting in the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

She was 64.

The following years were a mix of triumph and tragedy -

Judi lost her beloved husband, Michael, to cancer.

Professionally, however, she seemed unstoppable,

gathering five more Oscar nominations.

It was an extraordinary record

and something that director, Richard Eyre, tried to explore

when he interviewed her in 2002.

Judi, you've had a stream of successes recently in films,

from Mrs Brown, Shakespeare In Love, Iris and recently Bond films,

but most of your career you've spent in the theatre.

And I'd say, "Now that you're at your peak,"

but you could say that you've been at your peak for 40 years,

but do you think you've got better?

Oh, I can't...

I absolutely can't answer that question because I have no...

no kind of degree of self-judgment, really.

Somebody came round after The Breath Of Life and said,

"How did you feel about this evening?"

I said, "I'm sorry, but that's a question I should ask you,

"not you should ask me."

I'm not, I'm... I think sometimes when actors think that they've given,

perhaps, a good performance,

they may have given the worst performance of their lives,

I don't think we're good at judging.

Why would they have given the worst performance of their lives?

Well, I don't think necessarily we're the best people to judge,

-this side of the footlights, for instance.

-But...

And as I don't see any films I do, or very, very rarely,

I haven't seen Room With A View and I haven't seen Chocolat and I haven't

seen The Shipping News and I haven't seen Die Another Day...

I'm not good at judging anyway, then.

So, the bit of both,

the paradox about acting, is that it's a perfect balance

between being conscious of yourself and not being self-conscious

and I think you have that perfect balance. Are you aware of that?

No.

-But you are. Because I've seen you...

-I'm not.

-..when I've been working with you.

You will sometimes do a piece of business, let's say,

one night, you'll pick up a glass, go to drink it and then

decide not to drink it and it's a remarkable gesture.

I shall do it tonight!

I've said to you, "Oh, Judi, I love it when you do..."

And you say, "yes, I did that on that word."

And I've gone, "Really?" You seem to be completely spontaneous

and yet you have a perfect memory and a perfect consciousness.

Well, isn't it the same thing as actually being on a stage

where, although you and I can be playing a scene together,

this ear, here

is not actually listening to you, this ear has turned round like a cat's

and is listening to every single bit of that, so I know that person

up there is coughing and I know that person down there is coughing.

And this eye, here is not looking at you

but it's actually also watching there so that you...

You know, it is a kind of double, kind of...

It's a kind of dichotomy, isn't it, really?

I don't know.

I don't know, it's perhaps good not to think too much about it.

Do you think it's learned...

I mean, technique, you've learned how to act in films,

haven't you?

Erm, I've learned better how to act in films,

but that will never...

Although I love the process of that, now,

which I used to really dislike intensely.

Erm...

Now, having done more films, I understand that.

That is absolutely watching other people who are good at it.

-I mean...

-Did you want to be a...

No, I never wanted to be in a film,

Because I don't... I didn't understand it, then

and I actually don't really understand it, now.

I mean, I understand that we can do a scene, but it seems to me

that there are so many thousands of ways to do a scene that, erm...

it is an agony to me that one way is chosen.

So, therefore, that one way is kind of in formaldehyde,

there it is. That's why I don't like going and seeing films,

because I would want to change them.

That's why the theatre is so alive, because... Spontaneous...

I mean, I...

Tonight, I will do something that I didn't do last night.

I may do it worse, but I may do it better.

You're almost, erm...

in this country, a surrogate royal family,

-only rather better behaved than most of them.

-Richard, do stop.

But one of the reasons, people... You have the stated part,

because people cast you...

as queens. You know, Cleopatra...

-Only three queens.

-Well, three queens is enough.

Well, three Queens in 44 years isn't much.

Well, it's probably three more than most people have played.

But people identify you with a sort of grace,

a dignity and a stoicism, endurance.

In some way, they intuit from your performances

qualities that you have as a person.

I mean, it's not a coincidence that you are the person that the families

of the people who died in the Twin Towers asked to read a lesson.

Do you have any sense of what it is in yourself?

No, I would like them to think I was a firebrand and, you know...

-I don't like to be thought of as stoic, stois...

-Stoic.

-Stoic.

And, erm, you know. I don't particularly like that.

I would like to be... It's like, I dislike that as much as I dislike being

pigeonholed as one thing.

I've never wanted to be thought of as one kind of actress.

If a part came up, you know, if having played erm...

Who shall we say? Iris Murdoch.

Another part comes up of similar kind of quality,

then I can't do that, everything in me says no.

Do something... Be a tightrope walker in the circus.

I don't want to have just a particular kind of form of,

of being thought of. I don't like that.

But I suppose the paradox for me,

who knows you very well, is that if you have a...

If people think of you as this terribly graceful, demure,

-genteel person, the reality is that you're very...

-I'm certainly not.

-I'm none of those.

-..raunchy.

-Raunchy is a good word, yes, raunchy.

-Yes, I mean...

-I mean, you're... there's nothing prudish about you.

-I hope not.

-So, does anything human disgust you?

What makes you... I've heard you say...

Small-mindedness makes me very, very angry indeed.

Erm...

And rigidness makes me angry.

Rigidity of not ever,

ever being able to see beyond what you imagine the boundaries are,

that's always irritated me.

And I don't like that unawareness of people.

People stand, actually,

much too close to you, or invade that, kind of, area that we all have,

so barge...

you know, not necessarily physical barging in but, somehow, you know...

don't give you... just a space of some kind.

That's quite important, your own privacy is very important to you?

Yes. I remember Katharine Whitehorn saying that anyone who is in the theatre

has no right to a private life, she said it a long time ago

and I thought, "I couldn't disagree with her more",

because I think we show so much of us, you know, in all aspects,

because... Previously having said of sieving everything through you,

you actually expose a lot of yourself and you peel a lot of the onion...

things off. I think you ought to be able to have that

thing inside that is just you and that just you know about.

But do you think it's part of the prurient curiosity

of the public that they want to invade out of fascination?

Yes, and they think they know you.

People imagine, because they see you in so many things,

they imagine that that's what you're like.

They imagine that they know you as a person

and that's not so.

Apart from having a terrible temper, which I must say you use

very selectively, what do you think your faults are?

Erm...

I think I jump to the conclusion about things

and people too quickly, but I've always done that

and I'm nearly always proved wrong.

What do you think are your faults as an actress are?

Erm...

Perhaps I don't want to say, because I... That's why,

some reasons that... I can't see my performance on stage

and I don't go very often to see myself in films

because I don't want to come face-to-face with that,

because I once remember seeing the television of Macbeth

and being so desperately disappointed

because I thought that wasn't... surely wasn't what I was doing.

I don't like to... See, that's a very cowardly side of me,

that I don't want to see that, I don't...

I don't want to see something that I...

that I think was so different.

I was appalled, I thought it wasn't, it can't have been like that.

So I thought, "I won't look at something

"until a long time has passed, then I will probably look at it again."

Do you think you're vain?

I'm vain in so far as sometimes I see a photograph of myself and think,

"Oh, please, that's not me," because I'm this tall, willowy, blonde woman.

I am vain, then, yes.

But vain, I'm not vain in that I...

I'm not vain to think, "Oh, well, I wouldn't do that because

I'm A, prudish about it,

or B, it won't show me up in a good light,

or C, I won't look good doing it. I don't mind, that doesn't make me

in the slightest... so if that's not being vain, then I'm not doing it.

So it's the highest virtue, that... and a virtue I think you possess

and the virtue you admire most in others, is that generosity?

I do admire that. I do admire that enormously.

And I think also, you know, I mean, yes, generosity of spirit

and just generous, in order to be able to talk

and maybe change your mind about something.

Because unless you have that kind of amorphous...

you're that kind of amorphous person, then it seems to me that

you would come like that to a part and you would say,

"This is the boundaries of my scenes,"

so therefore, everything that is fed in about you, you know...

That's why I don't want to read the play before hand, really, because

you hear actors, you hear other characters say something, so that all comes...

So it's an amorphous thing all the time in the theatre,

it's always like that, every night is like this

and every night changes because you suddenly hear something

that you think, I haven't really thought about.

I remember on the last of the hundreds of performances of

Antony and Cleopatra suddenly thinking something,

"Why didn't I think..."

And then I thought, "Well, there's just time to do it tonight."

Whereas in film, you know, you make the choice

and you still are amorphous, but you make the choice,

but then that choice is suddenly bottled.

It's bottled and it never changes.

And very, very, very good film actors don't mind about that.

But I mind very much, so in that way I am vain, in that I mind

very, very much indeed that it isn't as good as I could get it, I think.

It's that never-ending quest for improvement, even amidst

so much acclaim, that has made Dame Judi Dench's career

such a success and such a delight to watch.

She's achieved all there is to achieve, on stage, television

and the big-screen and yet, with every new role,

she just seems to get better and better.