UK Edition
How Hollywood hailed bright new talent Dame Judi Dench - 40 years late
Indisputably one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, Dame Judi Dench has been dazzling audiences and gathering rave reviews for more than 60 years on stage and screen.
If she hoped to receive such recognition in America though, she may have been mistaken.
A documentary about the life of Dame Judi, has revealed how she was greeted in the United States in recent years as a bright new talent, despite four decades on stage under her belt.
One journalist asked her, “What have you been doing until now?”, while Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul, initially believed he had spotted the new 'next big thing' after seeing her performance in Mrs Brown in 1997.
By then, of course, Dame Judi had played more or less every great Shakespearean role, with six Oliviers and six Baftas already on her mantlepiece.
“I saw this amazing performer, who England knew and the world didn’t,” Weinstein told the programme, of his first viewing of Mrs Brown.
“And I just go ‘who is this girl?’"
Dame Judi went on to be nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Queen Victoria, at the age of 61.
She went on to build a new career in Hollywood with the help of Weinstein, with roles in Shakespeare in Love, Iris and Philomena as well as 17 years as M in Bond.
Samantha Bond, the actress, said: “There is an extraordinary story she once told me. She had gone to America to do the pre-publicity for Mrs Brown.
“And she was being interviewed by the American journalists and they said to her, in all seriousness: 'We all know you from the Bond films. So what did you do before?'
“That’s 40 years of a career where she had to go, ‘well...I’ve done quite a lot of Shakespeare…’
“Completely oblivious to the magnificence we’ve all been watching for as long as I can remember.”
The programme, Judi Dench: All The World’s Her Stage, tracked Dame Judi from her first, disastrous appearance as Ophelia straight out of drama school to the modern day, with photographs and footage of her as a young actress.
Dame Judi told how a “deep well of sadness in her” had helped her create her most emotional performances, disclosing she enjoyed the variety of the stage because “I don’t have much quiet inside me”.
Sir Richard Eyre, the director, said: “Her great gift as an actress is to make people feel she’s accessible to them.”
“But she’s much more private and there’s a core of her that is hard to know. And when you do know it, you feel there is something there, a soul that is far from untroubled.”