Judi Dench: The Life Story Behind the Dame

Judi Dench is the actress who has been the greatest of her generation for so long that it is easy to forget she was once a young woman from York who simply loved the theatre. When she played M in the James Bond films, beginning with “GoldenEye” in 1995, she brought a steel and a wit to the role that made the head of MI6 feel real for the first time. When she played Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998, she was on screen for only eight minutes, yet she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has played queens, mothers, spies, and ordinary women, and she has done it all with a warmth, a humour, and a precision that make her one of the most loved actors in the world. She is a Dame, a winner of more BAFTAs than any other actor, and a performer who, even as her eyesight has faded, has refused to stop working. Her story is about seven decades of acting, about York, about the Old Vic, and about a woman who has given her life to the theatre and to the screen.

The story starts in York, England, with a young Judi Dench and a family life that gave her both roots and restlessness. Her father, Reginald, was a doctor, and her mother, Eileen, raised her and her brother, Jeffery, who also became an actor, in York. She grew up in a household where theatre mattered, because her father was involved with the local theatre. She attended The Mount School in York, and she later studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, training as an actor.

Read on for the complete journey, from small beginnings to M in James Bond, and from there into the decades of work, risk, and reinvention that made Judi Dench a name the whole world recognises.

A York Childhood and a Doctor Father

Judi Dench was born in York, England, in 1934, the daughter of a doctor father, Reginald, and a mother, Eileen, who raised her and her brother, Jeffery, in a household where theatre mattered. Her father was involved with the York Mystery Plays, and the young Judi grew up around performance, watching plays and learning to love the stage. She attended The Mount School in York, a Quaker school, and she was a lively, curious girl, more interested in performing than in studying. She decided to become an actor, and she studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where she trained and began her career. York gave her her roots, and it gave her a sense of community that she has carried throughout her life. She has spoken about how her father’s work as a doctor taught her about compassion, and how her mother’s support gave her the confidence to pursue acting. Those early years were about learning, about performing in school plays, and about discovering that she had a gift for telling stories, a gift that would take her to the top of her profession.

For Judi Dench, Childhood in York in 1940 was the moment to show York, England that the earlier success of Judi Dench was no accident. Dench grew up in York, the daughter of a doctor, in a household where theatre mattered. Childhood in York stands as a reminder from 1940 that the best moments for Judi Dench often come from saying yes to the difficult job. It also explains why the phone kept ringing for Judi Dench after Childhood in York, because dependable talent is genuinely rare in York, England.

The year 1945 brought The Mount School, and Judi Dench approached it in York, England as a chance for Judi Dench to be seen differently. She attended the Quaker school in York, where she discovered her love of performing. It also proved how much Judi Dench had grown in craft, confidence, and control of The Mount School since 1945. There is a reliability in how Judi Dench handles such moments that directors in York, England learn to count on after The Mount School.

In 1954, Judi Dench joined Central School of Speech and Drama, a project in York, England whose scale surprised even Judi Dench and the people making it. She trained in London, learning the craft that would make her one of the great actors. The work of Judi Dench in Central School of Speech and Drama landed because Judi Dench treated it seriously in 1954, and seriousness is something audiences in York, England can feel. It is a useful reminder that the career of Judi Dench was built as much in the small jobs as in the famous ones like Central School of Speech and Drama.

The value of Childhood in York for Judi Dench shows up in what followed in York, England, in the confidence of the choices and the quality of the work after 1940.

The Old Vic, the RSC, and Seven Decades on Stage

Dench’s career began on stage, with the Old Vic company in Liverpool, where she played Ophelia in “Hamlet” in 1957, a performance that marked her professional debut. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played some of the great classical roles, including Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, and she became one of the finest stage actors in Britain. She performed in the West End, on Broadway, and in theatres around the world, and she has won more Olivier Awards than any other actor. The stage has always been her first love, and she has said that theatre is where she feels most alive, because it is immediate, because the audience is there, and because there is no second take. She has continued to perform on stage throughout her career, even as her film work grew, and she remains one of the most respected theatre actors in the world. Those stage years stretched long and were rarely glamorous, yet they laid the foundation for everything Dench would do afterwards. They made her the actress she became, a performer of extraordinary range, discipline, and warmth.

1957 gave Judi Dench Old Vic debut, and the part demanded a steadiness in York, England that only experience teaches Judi Dench. She made her professional debut as Ophelia in Hamlet, marking the start of a seven-decade career. The result of Old Vic debut spoke for itself in York, England, and it gave Judi Dench a stronger footing for everything after 1957. The attention to detail in Old Vic debut is what lifts the good work of Judi Dench into work people in York, England remember.

1961 gave Judi Dench Royal Shakespeare Company, and the part demanded a steadiness in York, England that only experience teaches Judi Dench. Her work with the RSC established her as one of Britain’s finest classical actors. Royal Shakespeare Company stands as a reminder from 1961 that the best moments for Judi Dench often come from saying yes to the difficult job. The lesson of Royal Shakespeare Company is simple for Judi Dench: do the hard job well in York, England, and the next door opens by itself.

Olivier Awards in 1977 found Judi Dench ready for a bigger stage, even if York, England was not sure yet about Judi Dench. She has won more Olivier Awards than any other actor, a record of her stage greatness. Looking back from York, England, it is easy to see why Olivier Awards stayed in the mind of Judi Dench’s audience long after 1977. The lesson of Olivier Awards is simple for Judi Dench: do the hard job well in York, England, and the next door opens by itself.

What Old Vic debut gave the career of Judi Dench was range rather than noise, and range is what keeps a performer working for years in York, England.

M in James Bond and a New Kind of Authority

In 1995, Judi Dench became M, the head of MI6, in “GoldenEye”, the first James Bond film of the Pierce Brosnan era, and the role changed her career. She was the first woman to play M, and she brought a steel, a wit, and a moral authority to the role that made the character feel real for the first time. She played M in seven Bond films, from “GoldenEye” to “Skyfall” in 2012, and her scenes with Bond, in which she scolded him, challenged him, and cared for him, became some of the most loved in the franchise. In “Skyfall”, her M became the heart of the film, and her death in the story was one of the most emotional moments in Bond history. Dench has spoken about how much the role meant to her, because it introduced her to a global audience, and because it showed that a woman in her sixties could be a powerful figure on screen. M remains one of her defining roles, and it is a testament to her ability to command any scene, with just a look, a pause, and a perfectly chosen word.

By 1995, GoldenEye as M had arrived, and Judi Dench knew the work in York, England would be judged on its own terms, not on Judi Dench’s past. She became the first woman to play M, bringing steel and wit to the head of MI6. What lasted from GoldenEye as M was not the headline but the craft of Judi Dench, and craft is what keeps a career alive in York, England. It is one more reason the story of Judi Dench reads as earned in York, England rather than handed over after GoldenEye as M.

2012 paired Judi Dench with Skyfall, a project in York, England that needed patience, nerve, and long hours from Judi Dench. Her M became the heart of the film, and her death was one of Bond’s most emotional moments. For Judi Dench, Skyfall was proof that the long hours and the early sacrifices in York, England had not been wasted. It is the kind of step that looks simple for Judi Dench in hindsight and felt anything but simple in York, England at the time.

Seven Bond films landed in 2012, and for Judi Dench it was less a reward in York, England than a fresh responsibility for Judi Dench. She played M across seven films, becoming one of the franchise’s most loved figures. The response to Seven Bond films showed that Judi Dench could carry a big moment in York, England without forcing it. The steadiness behind Seven Bond films is the part of Judi Dench that does not show up in headlines from 2012.

The importance of GoldenEye as M is easy to overlook if you only read the headlines from 1995. The true change for Judi Dench was in the doors it opened afterwards in York, England.

Shakespeare in Love and Eight Minutes That Won an Oscar

In 1998, Judi Dench played Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love”, and she was on screen for only about eight minutes, yet her performance won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She played the Queen with a wit, a power, and a humour that made every second count, and her scenes became some of the most quoted in the film. The win was remarkable, because it recognised a performance of extraordinary economy, a masterclass in how to make a small role unforgettable. She has spoken about how she approached the role, about finding the Queen’s voice, her humour, and her authority, and about the joy of working with a great cast. The Oscar was one of many honours, and it came after decades of work on stage and screen. It was also a sign of her versatility, because she could play a queen in eight minutes and make it feel like a lifetime. “Shakespeare in Love” remains one of her most famous films, and it is a performance that will be studied for generations.

Around 1998, Shakespeare in Love put Judi Dench in front of a new audience in York, England, and the response mattered to Judi Dench. Her eight minutes as Elizabeth I won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Shakespeare in Love showed a performer in York, England willing to be judged on the work itself, which is a brave choice for Judi Dench. That mix of effort and calm from Judi Dench is difficult to imitate, and it is why Shakespeare in Love still earns discussion in York, England.

With Mrs Brown in 1997, Judi Dench found a project in York, England that matched the ambition Judi Dench had carried quietly. Her portrayal of Queen Victoria earned her an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA. Mrs Brown rewards a second look, because the care Judi Dench put into it in 1997 only becomes clear over time. It is one more reason the story of Judi Dench reads as earned in York, England rather than handed over after Mrs Brown.

The year 1999 brought Oscar acceptance, and Judi Dench approached it in York, England as a chance for Judi Dench to be seen differently. Her win was celebrated as a triumph for a lifetime of great acting. In the wider arc of the life of Judi Dench, Oscar acceptance stands as evidence from 1999 that the progress was real, not lucky. It also explains why the phone kept ringing for Judi Dench after Oscar acceptance, because dependable talent is genuinely rare in York, England.

The reason Shakespeare in Love still gets mentioned in York, England is simple: it changed the direction of the story of Judi Dench for good.

Mrs Brown, Philomena, and the Serious Dramas

Dench’s film career includes some of the finest dramas in British cinema, most notably “Mrs Brown” in 1997, in which she played Queen Victoria, a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA Award. She played a grieving queen who finds comfort in the company of her servant, John Brown, and her performance was intimate, moving, and profoundly human. She also starred in “Philomena” in 2013, in which she played a woman searching for the son she was forced to give up for adoption, a performance that earned her another Oscar nomination. The film was a critical and commercial success, and it showed Dench’s ability to play ordinary women with extraordinary depth. She has also appeared in “Notes on a Scandal” in 2006, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” in 2011, and in many other films that show her range. Her dramatic work is the heart of her film career, and it is a testament to her ability to find the humanity in any character, whether a queen or a working-class mother.

By 1997, Mrs Brown had arrived, and Judi Dench knew the work in York, England would be judged on its own terms, not on Judi Dench’s past. Her Queen Victoria earned her an Oscar nomination, showing her gift for intimate drama. The job mattered because Mrs Brown stretched what people in York, England believed Judi Dench could take on next. That willingness of Judi Dench to keep learning is visible in Mrs Brown, and it is what keeps the work of Judi Dench fresh.

By 2013, Philomena had arrived, and Judi Dench knew the work in York, England would be judged on its own terms, not on Judi Dench’s past. Her search for a lost son earned her another Oscar nomination, and the film moved audiences worldwide. The work of Judi Dench in Philomena landed because Judi Dench treated it seriously in 2013, and seriousness is something audiences in York, England can feel. There is a reliability in how Judi Dench handles such moments that directors in York, England learn to count on after Philomena.

With Notes on a Scandal in 2006, Judi Dench found a project in York, England that matched the ambition Judi Dench had carried quietly. Her performance as a lonely teacher showed a darker, more complex side of her talent. For audiences in York, England, Notes on a Scandal became the piece they mention first when they explain why they admire Judi Dench. The quiet discipline of Judi Dench behind Notes on a Scandal is easy to miss in York, England, and it is the most important part.

Mrs Brown was a hinge moment for Judi Dench, the kind that only looks obvious in York, England once you know how the story of Judi Dench ends.

Eyesight, Resilience, and Refusing to Stop

In recent years, Dench has spoken openly about living with macular degeneration, a condition that affects her eyesight, and that has made it harder for her to read scripts and to see. She has said that she can no longer read, and that she learns her lines by having them read to her, yet she has refused to stop working. She has continued to act on stage and on screen, including in “Belfast” in 2021, Kenneth Branagh’s film about his childhood in Northern Ireland, in which she played a grandmother, and which earned her another Oscar nomination. Her resilience has become an inspiration, showing that age and disability need not end a career. She has also spoken about the importance of humour, about laughing at herself, and about the support of her family and friends. She lives in Surrey, and she has built a life that balances work with rest, and fame with privacy. Her determination to keep working, despite her eyesight, is one of the most admired things about her, and it shows a woman who loves acting too much to give it up.

In 2012, Macular degeneration gave Judi Dench a challenge that looked modest in York, England and proved demanding for Judi Dench inside. She has spoken openly about her failing eyesight, and about learning lines by ear. The response to Macular degeneration showed that Judi Dench could carry a big moment in York, England without forcing it. The steadiness behind Macular degeneration is the part of Judi Dench that does not show up in headlines from 2012.

With Belfast in 2021, Judi Dench found a project in York, England that matched the ambition Judi Dench had carried quietly. Her performance as a grandmother earned her another Oscar nomination, at eighty-six. In the wider arc of the life of Judi Dench, Belfast stands as evidence from 2021 that the progress was real, not lucky. Careers like that of Judi Dench are built on steps like Belfast, taken seriously in York, England and finished properly.

In 2022, Refusing to retire became a test of whether Judi Dench could grow in York, England without losing what made Judi Dench interesting. She has said she has no plans to stop acting, because the work still brings her joy. The work of Judi Dench in Refusing to retire landed because Judi Dench treated it seriously in 2022, and seriousness is something audiences in York, England can feel. It is the kind of step that looks simple for Judi Dench in hindsight and felt anything but simple in York, England at the time.

Macular degeneration was a hinge moment for Judi Dench, the kind that only looks obvious in York, England once you know how the story of Judi Dench ends.

What Judi Dench Means to Acting

Dench’s legacy is the proof that a lifetime of honest work can make you a legend, and that the theatre is the foundation of great acting. She began as a girl from York, made her debut as Ophelia, and became one of the greatest actors in history. She showed that a woman can play queens and mothers, spies and grandmothers, and make each one feel real. Her influence can be seen in the many actors who followed her path, and in the way the industry now talks about longevity. She has won more BAFTAs than any other actor, she has been made a Dame, and she has been loved by audiences for seven decades. Young actors look at her career and see a lesson, work hard, stay humble, love the theatre, and never stop. The girl from York who loved the stage became Dame Judi Dench, and her story is a reminder that great acting is not about fame, it is about truth, and about a life devoted to the craft, one performance at a time.

With Most BAFTA wins in 2016, Judi Dench stepped into new territory, and Judi Dench felt the risk in York, England from the very first day. She has won more BAFTA Awards than any other actor, a record of her greatness. The job mattered because Most BAFTA wins stretched what people in York, England believed Judi Dench could take on next. That willingness of Judi Dench to keep learning is visible in Most BAFTA wins, and it is what keeps the work of Judi Dench fresh.

In 1988, Damehood gave Judi Dench a challenge that looked modest in York, England and proved demanding for Judi Dench inside. She was made a Dame for her services to drama, one of Britain’s highest honours. Damehood showed a performer in York, England willing to be judged on the work itself, which is a brave choice for Judi Dench. The lesson of Damehood is simple for Judi Dench: do the hard job well in York, England, and the next door opens by itself.

The year 2021 brought Seven decades of acting, and Judi Dench approached it in York, England as a chance for Judi Dench to be seen differently. Her career spanning seventy years is one of the longest and most honoured in history. It also proved how much Judi Dench had grown in craft, confidence, and control of Seven decades of acting since 2021. Such work builds trust for Judi Dench, and trust is the currency of Seven decades of acting that never goes out of fashion in York, England.

Its real importance for Judi Dench lies beyond a single moment in Most BAFTA wins. It shifted how people in York, England spoke about Judi Dench, and it made the next stage possible.

My Take:

The first thing I want to say about Judi Dench is that her career breaks the usual rules of stardom so completely that it is almost a different profession from the one most famous actors practise. She did not become a film star until she was sixty-one, when GoldenEye put her in front of a global audience as M. She did not win her Oscar until she was sixty-four, for eight minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love. She did not become a household name in America until an age when most actresses are being told, politely or otherwise, that the good parts have dried up. Everything about her timing is wrong by the conventional wisdom, and everything about her timing is right by the evidence. The conventional wisdom says that an actress’s career peaks early and narrows. Dench’s career widened with every decade, and the work got better as she got older, which tells me that the conventional wisdom was never describing talent. It was describing a market, and Dench simply refused to let the market set her limits.

Her stage career is the foundation, and it is worth understanding properly, because it is where the famous film performances actually come from. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and made her professional debut with the Old Vic in 1957, playing Ophelia in Hamlet. Think about what that means: she was twenty-two, playing one of the most exposed roles in the canon, in a company that was the closest thing Britain had to a national theatre. From there she spent decades with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, playing Lady Macbeth opposite Ian McKellen in 1976, Cleopatra in 1987, and a long line of Shakespeare heroines that most actresses would consider a lifetime’s work on their own. She also did musicals, comedies, and new plays, and she collected Olivier Awards the way other actors collect parking tickets. The point is not the list of roles. The point is that by the time Hollywood noticed her, she had already spent forty years doing the hardest acting there is, eight shows a week, in front of audiences who could see every false note. Nothing in a film studio could frighten her after that, and it shows in every frame she is in.

The M role is the one that changed her public life, and it is worth asking why it worked so well. When she took over as the head of MI6 in GoldenEye in 1995, she was the first woman to play the part, and the script made a point of it: her M calls Bond a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War. That line was written for the character, but it also described the moment. Dench brought to M a quality that no previous actor in the role had attempted, which was moral authority that did not need to shout. Her M did not bark orders or wave a gun around. She sat at a desk, looked at Bond with a mixture of affection and contempt, and made it clear that she was the only adult in the building. Over seven films, from GoldenEye to Skyfall, she turned a bureaucratic role into the emotional spine of the franchise. When she died on screen in Skyfall, in Bond’s arms, it was the most moving scene in any Bond film, and it worked because Dench had spent seventeen years making audiences believe that this woman mattered more than the gadgets. That is not a supporting performance. That is a load-bearing performance, and the franchise knew it.

Shakespeare in Love is the film that won her the Oscar, and the story of that win is almost as interesting as the performance. She played Queen Elizabeth I, appeared on screen for about eight minutes, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Eight minutes. Most actors need two hours to make an impression; Dench needed a single scene in which she tells a courtier that she knows what love is because she has a sense of it, and the whole film bends around her. What I love about that win is what it says about screen presence. It is not about time. It is about density — how much life, humour, intelligence, and authority an actor can put into a single look. Dench’s Elizabeth is funny, terrifying, and oddly tender all at once, and she does it without a single wasted gesture. The Oscar was not a lifetime achievement award, although it sometimes gets described that way. It was a prize for eight minutes of acting that nobody else in the world could have delivered.

Mrs Brown, from the year before, is the film I would show someone who wants to understand her range. She played Queen Victoria in the years after Prince Albert’s death, a widow locked in grief, who finds an unlikely companionship with her Scottish servant John Brown, played by Billy Connolly. The performance is almost entirely interior: a woman who has forgotten how to be alive, remembering slowly, and then being punished for it by the court around her. Dench was nominated for the Oscar, won the BAFTA and the Golden Globe, and the film established something that her later career would confirm again and again: she is at her best playing women who are underestimated by everyone around them, and who turn out to be the strongest person in the room. That is the through-line from Mrs Brown to Philomena to Victoria & Abdul to Belfast. The characters change. The quality does not.

Philomena deserves its own paragraph, because it is the performance that made a new generation love her. In 2013, at seventy-eight, she played Philomena Lee, an Irish woman searching for the son she was forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier, opposite Steve Coogan as the journalist who helps her. The film is funny and devastating, often in the same scene, and Dench’s performance is the reason it works. She plays Philomena as a woman of deep, simple faith, who forgives people who do not deserve forgiveness, and she never once makes the character sentimental or saintly. There is a scene near the end, in the convent, where she confronts the nun who lied to her for decades, and Dench plays it with a quietness that is more frightening than any shouting could be. She was nominated for her seventh Oscar for that role. She was seventy-eight years old. Let that sit for a moment, because it tells you everything about the shape of this career: most people are winding down at seventy-eight. Dench was doing the best work of her life.

The eyesight story is the part of her life that I think about most, because it is where her character becomes visible in a way that no performance can show. In 2012 she announced that she had macular degeneration, a condition that was gradually taking her sight. She can no longer read a script. She learns her lines by having someone read them to her, over and over, until she has memorised them. Think about what that means for an actor whose whole career was built on reading — on scripts, on Shakespeare, on the page. She did not retire. She did not slow down in any meaningful way. She adapted, with the same matter-of-fact stubbornness that her characters show, and she kept working through Belfast, which earned her an eighth Oscar nomination at eighty-seven, and through stage work and television. I find that more impressive than any award, because awards are given by other people. This was a decision she made herself, in private, when nobody was watching, and it was the decision to keep going.

There is a temptation to describe Dench as a national treasure, and she is, but the phrase is a little too cosy for what she actually is. National treasures are supposed to be safe and comforting. Dench has spent her career being anything but safe. She played a woman who has an affair with a fifteen-year-old boy in Notes on a Scandal, and made the audience understand her without forgiving her. She played Iris Murdoch losing her mind to Alzheimer’s in Iris, and made it unbearable to watch. She played a foul-mouthed, funny, difficult woman in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and then again in its sequel, and refused to make her adorable. She even played a cat in Cats, a film that everyone involved would probably like to forget, and she did it with total commitment, because that is what she does. The safety of her reputation is an illusion. The work itself is full of sharp edges, and that is why it lasts.

Her television work is easy to overlook, and it should not be, because it is where the British public first fell in love with her. As Time Goes By, which ran from 1992 to 2005, made her a familiar face in millions of living rooms, playing Jean Pargetter, a woman who reconnects with a lost love from the Korean War. A Fine Romance, a decade earlier, did something similar. These were gentle, funny, romantic comedies, and Dench played them with the same seriousness she brought to Macbeth. That is a lesson in itself: she never treated comedy as a lesser art, and she never treated a sitcom audience as a lesser audience. The result is that she has a relationship with the British public that is genuinely rare. People do not just admire her. They feel they know her, and they feel protective of her, in a way that has nothing to do with fame and everything to do with trust built over decades.

Her personal life has been marked by a loss that shaped everything after it. She was married to the actor Michael Williams from 1971 until his death from lung cancer in 2001, and she has spoken about how hard those years were, and how the work kept her going. Their daughter, Finty Williams, born in 1972, is also an actor. In the years since, Dench has found companionship with David Mills, a conservationist, and she has spoken about him with a warmth and a humour that is characteristic of her: she once joked that she was too old for romance, and then got on with having one anyway. There is something deeply appealing about a woman who, at eighty and beyond, refuses to be filed under any of the categories the world has ready for her — not the grieving widow, not the retired dame, not the national treasure on a shelf. She is still working, still joking, still learning lines by ear, still turning up.

The question I keep returning to is what her career proves, and I think the answer is simpler than the film industry would like it to be. It proves that talent does not expire, that audiences will follow an actor anywhere if the work is honest, and that the parts for older women are only scarce because writers and producers have not been brave enough to write them. Dench did not wait for the industry to change. She worked so well, for so long, in so many different forms, that the industry had to make room for her. The eight Oscar nominations, the BAFTA Fellowship, the damehood in 1988 — these are the decorations. The real achievement is the body of work itself: seventy years of acting, from Ophelia at twenty-two to Belfast at eighty-seven, with no wasted decade and no cynical phase. If there is a single career in British acting that a young performer should study, not for the fame but for the craft and the stamina, it is this one. And the most hopeful thing about it is that it is still, in some sense, unfinished. She has said she has no plans to retire, and I believe her, because retirement would require her to stop doing the thing she has done every day since 1957. That is not a job. That is a life.

One last detail stays with me, and it is a small one. Dench has a tattoo on her wrist that reads “carpe diem”, which she got for her eightieth birthday, at the suggestion of her daughter. It is a fitting motto for a woman who has seized every day of a working life that spans seven decades, and who did her most famous film work after most people retire. The tattoo is also a reminder that the image of Dame Judi as a figure of dignified tradition is only half the story. The other half is a woman who got a tattoo at eighty, who swears cheerfully in interviews, who laughs at herself, and who has never once behaved the way a dame is supposed to behave. That mischief is part of the acting too. The best performers are the ones who keep surprising you, and Judi Dench has been surprising audiences since 1957. If she surprises us again, it will be entirely in character.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Judi Dench become famous?

She first became known on stage with the Old Vic and RSC, then became a global star as M in James Bond from 1995.

Did Judi Dench win an Oscar?

Yes. She won Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, despite being on screen for only eight minutes.

Is Judi Dench M in James Bond?

Yes. She played M in seven Bond films, from GoldenEye in 1995 to Skyfall in 2012.

What is Judi Dench’s most famous role?

M in James Bond is her most famous film role, though her stage work is equally celebrated.

Is Judi Dench still acting?

Yes. She continues to act despite macular degeneration, including her Oscar-nominated role in Belfast.

How many BAFTAs has Judi Dench won?

She has won more BAFTA Awards than any other actor in history.