Over Sixty Spring 2022 Digital

22 ENTERTAINMENT ISSUE 2 | 2022 | OVERSIXTY.COM.AU Judi Dench on why working matters “I always hope that I will be asked to do something different” JAMES MOTTRAM ENTERTAINMENT “ I might cough a bit…don’t get alarmed!” says Dame Judi Dench. In these pan- demic-riddled times, any tickle in the throat is a concern – especially if you’re 87 years old, as she is – but it’s nothing serious, she ass- ures me. With a floral scarf wrapped around her neck, her white hair neatly cropped, the acclaimed star of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Philomena , looks in fine fettle. Throughout the pandemic, the biggest is- sue Dench has experienced, like so many of us, is psychological. “The thing about Covid is that it mucked up the rhythm inside me, I feel,” she says. “I don’t know what the out- come of that will be. But it’s a curious, odd and unsettling feeling.” For an actress who has been performing professionally since 1957, rarely stopping, it’s no surprise to find her destabilised by the pandemic experience.Theatre, television and film have been her lifeblood. So how did she cope with the enforced lockdown? Bak- ing banana bread? “I planned to learn all the sonnets, the Shakespeare sonnets. I didn’t do that. I just didn’t do it,” she sighs. Inertia got the better of her. “You get nothing done.” Fortunately, Dench’s 24-year-old grand- son Sam Williams paid a visit and taught her all about social media site TikTok. “He’s a TikTok fiend,” she chuckles. Suddenly, she was dancing in micro-videos with Williams. “We would do it. And I’d say, ‘Can we [film] that now?’. He said, ‘No, no, no – more re- hearsal! You need more rehearsal’. That went on for weeks!” The clip, which sees Dench moving in perfect harmony with Samand his mother – her daughter Finty Williams – has already been viewed over 1.2 million times. Quite apart from staying limber and be- coming a viral sensation, Dench couldn’t wait to get back to work. While her eyesight has long been affected by macular degener- ation, making it difficult to read scripts, there has never been any thought about retiring. “I’ve always thought, one is very lucky to be employed!” she says, modestly. “I just think that and I always get frightened at the end of the job, because I think I’m not going to be employed again, and then feel very relieved at the beginning of the next one.” W inning an Oscar (for her imperious Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love ), a Tony, seven Olivier awards and a staggering ten BAFTAs for television and film, it’s bewildering to believe Dench still gets the jitters. Even when she scores a job, she feels anxious. “I’ll say! I get more anx- ious now!” she cries. “Oh, yes, much more anxious. There’s more things to consider and more things to find out and more things to learn about. And you think, Oh God, have I got the energy to do this ?” While her early years were spent working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the 1980s she starred in four series of UK sitcom A Fine Romance with late husband Michael Williams. Yet it was in the following decade, winning a first Oscar nod for her sensitive take on Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown , that she became a film star. Then in her mid-six- ties, this late bloom left her hungry for more. “I just, really, always hope that I will be asked to do something different,” she says. “And perhaps not expected. Or something that has no reference to anything I’ve done before.” That was exactly the case with her recent film, Belfast , directed by Kenneth Branagh. Old friends, they’ve worked together 12 times, but the semi-autobiographical account of Branagh’s childhood in the Northern Irish capital in 1969, just as the Troubles began, was unlike anything Dench has ever done. With the story seen through the eyes of the young Buddy (Jude Hill), Dench plays his Granny, almost unrecognisable thanks to a pudding bowl grey wig and thick Irish accent. She first met Branagh 25 years ago, on a TV production of Ibsen’s play Ghosts , with both inmischievousmoods. “We both got sent out of the studio for laughing,” she recalls. “We have very much the same sense of humour.” D ench has strong connections to Ireland. Her mother was from Dublin and her father, a doctor who hailed from Dorset, also grew up in southern Ireland. Dench grew up as a Quaker, though her beloved husband – who died in 2001, 30 years into their marriage – was Catholic. She recalls being advised to convert before they married. “And then a great, great friend of ours, Tom Corbishley, who was the master of Campion Hall [at Oxford University], said, ‘No, no, no. Youmustn’t convert. On the page you may not meet, but off the page, you do.’ And that was a wonderfully quiet, sensitive, loving thing to say.” She speaks fondly of Wil- liams, especially when we move onto her time playing James Bond’s MI6 superior M, a tenure that began with 1995’s GoldenEye. “Mikey, my husband, longed to live with a Bond woman! He longed for it!” she chuck- les, softly. She recently went to the premiere of No Time To Die at the Royal Albert Hall, to witnessDaniel Craig’s final outing as Bond. “It was a very emotional moment!” says Dench, who featured in theprevious eight 007movies. Acting runs in the family – with daughter Finty, 49, also a regular on stage and screen. Her grandson Sam, on the other hand, isn’t keen. “He’s no desire whatsoever to act,” says Dench. Nevertheless, last year he joined Dench and his mother onstage for “A Dench and 2 Williams,” an “evening with” event. “Sammy was so calm. Finty and I were nerv- ous wrecks!” she laughs. Dench’s curiosity and creativity remains undimmed. She’s already completed her next movie role – Allelujah, as a patient resid- ing in a Yorkshire hospital on a geriatric ward threatened with closure – due out in 2023. After all the success she’s enjoyed, what would she tell her younger self if she could? “Don’t be so susceptible.” To what? “To fall- ing in love with people!” Was that what she was like when she was younger? “Oh, cer- tainly!” she coos. “It’s such a glorious stage, isn’t it? You can’t kind of resist to give it up. And then you do it all over again.” She gig- gles. “Just hopeless!” The acclaimed actress has been performing professionally since 1957, and shows no signs of slowing down at 87 Photo: Getty Images ENTERTAINMENT The great actor opens up about stage fright, Covid and her viral TikTok videos BONUS SECTION Pet Food www.houseofpets.com.au Pet Beds Pet Food Treats Ma s & Protectors Tick & Flea Treatment Accessories Scan Here to Browse Our Latest Collection