Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Judi Dench’s home is exactly what one would imagine it to be. A haven in the heart of east Surrey, where the 90-year-old actor has lived for more than 40 years, it’s where she and her late husband, the actor Michael Williams, brought up their daughter Finty. The farmhouse, with its ancient 14th-century bones, is as warm and enveloping as its owner. Deep sofas and a large inglenook fire are the first things you see when you enter via an old wooden door. “Mind your head!” she’s always crying out. Visitors wipe their feet on a 007 doormat that reads “I’ve been expecting you, Mr Bond” – a gift from her grandson Sammie (she played the role of M a total of eight times). The house is filled with her history: a doctor’s office chair comes from her father’s surgery in York, where she grew up. There are photos and mementoes, an impressive collection of cuddly toys, and her colossal array of Baftas, Oliviers, Golden Globes and Tonys. The Oscar that she won for her eight-minute turn in Shakespeare In Love is also on the shelf. Chairs are covered in painstakingly precise tapestries, many of which she embroidered waiting on film sets or backstage. And then, in the drawing room, stands a six-foot stuffed dinosaur wearing a tall Santa hat. “Isn’t he marvellous?” she gushes. “I gave him to my grandson Sammie for Christmas. I ask how old Sam is. “Twenty-seven!” she replies – that unique voice still vibrant and always gusty with laughter. Dench has an astounding energy. We sit at the pine kitchen table drinking mugs of tea and eating shortbread biscuits before cracking open a bottle of champagne. Beside us, a huge birdcage (home to her parrot Sweetie), a vase of red roses and a framed note from Alan Bennett. She describes all the projects she’s still working on – including a performance of Twelfth Night with Gyles Brandreth and friends at the Orange Tree Theatre. She gives me a copy of a recent book on Shakespeare she has co-written with Brendan O’Hea. “It’s called The Man Who Pays The Rent – because he has!” she hoots. Dench famously has a prodigious memory. She tells me she has a head crammed full of a lifetime of poetry and Shakespeare, and promptly launches at a pace into Cassius’s speech to Brutus in Julius Caesar, learned as a child from her older brother, Jeff. “He was 11 and I was seven!” She knows she is lucky to have “all that Shakespeare” in her head. She watches programmes that keep her brain active. “I adore University Challenge and Only Connect,” she says, before producing a bag of extra-large Bananagrams, which she can still see despite her failing sight. “Maggie [Smith] and I always used to play Scrabble and then we were sent these. Go on!” she says, tipping the letters onto the table. “Pick out two letters at a time and let’s see how many famous names we can make?” She’s very good. I imagine she has provided many wonderful meals for friends over the years in the warm welcome of her kitchen. “God! No! I hate it, I’m a dreadful cook!” she cries. “My late agent was Julian Belfrage – we were students together and I was the first person on his books. He came down here and was sitting at this table. I gave him lunch and afterwards he said these very words: ‘Well, Jude, I’ll tell you one thing, you didn’t get your OBE for cooking!’”Judi may be no cook but she is an avid gardener and has a lifelong passion for animals. She grew up with 14 cats in the family home, the ducks in the pond in front of the house all have names, and she is an active supporter of animal charities. In the six acres of garden that surround her home, she has planted more than 100 trees, a sort of memorial arboretum. Slate tags bear the names – John Gielgud, Stephen Sondheim, Helen McCrory, her next-door neighbour Ian and best school friend Joanne. “I have always loved being around people,” she tells me. “By doing this they are always with me. Look over there” – she points, although she can barely see now – “alongside the hedge. Can you see the tiny tree over there? It’s a crab-apple I planted for Maggie. On the day of her funeral it had one tiny apple on it so I picked it and kept it in my pocket all day.”Maggie Smith and Dench were always close, though teasingly competitive. My husband, Robert Fox, the producer who worked with Dench on the films Notes on a Scandal and Iris, remembers working with the actors on The Breath of Life by David Hare. “Jude had the first-floor dressing room [at Theatre Royal Haymarket] and there was a constant stream of visitors both before and after every performance. Maggie, who was not known for being as sociable, would say it felt like she was being ‘deafened’ by the thundering of all her friends’ footsteps pounding up the stairs each night.”Dench celebrated her 90th birthday in December. A few weeks earlier, Barbara Broccoli, producer of the Bond films, threw a lunch for her at The Ivy to celebrate the event. Around the table were gathered some of the most distinguished directors and actors of their generation; an environment in which huge egos might ordinarily combust. “They will all behave well, because everyone does in Judi’s presence, because she always behaves impeccably,” said Robert. And of course they did. Neither was there a shortage of stories about this remarkable talent, this terrific woman, this gifted storyteller – so we have gathered them here in celebration of a woman who remains one of the most beloved actors in the world.Ian McKellen, actorJudi has a multitude of friends and, beyond them, of course, her audiences, who would like to be her friend. This means that whatever company of actors she is working with, she will effortlessly be the pack leader, alert to everyone’s needs at work and after work. Friendship with Judi is about jokes, japes, laughter, helpless laughter. She loves giving presents. I knocked on her dressing-room door during a matinée of The Promise, our first job together at the Oxford Playhouse, in 1966. “Come in!” – but I couldn’t easily, as behind the door, Judi and her mother were busy wrapping and labelling a pile of Christmas presents. It was early October. And when we were the Macbeths in the tiny Other Place theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1976, there were only two dressing rooms, divided by a curtain that was usually pulled open: intimacy was public. On my birthday, everyone gave me the same present – a new pair of underwear to replace the worn-out baggies that Judi had spied beyond the dressing-room curtain.Gyles Brandreth, writer and broadcasterI once asked Judi if she could remember when she was first happy. She replied that all of her childhood was charmed, she adored her parents and her brothers, and her recollections were of everyone in the family laughing a lot. Her ma playing the piano, and how her parents loved to have parties where everybody would be singing. She told me of a little boy called David Belchamber who lived in the house next door. They were the same age and always play-acting, dressing up from the large ottoman that was filled with costumes made by her ma. One day – she thinks she was six years old – she remembers sitting on the garden wall with David and he said to her, “I think we should call each other darling.” I asked Judi if she would call him her first boyfriend and she replied, “It was just play-acting!” In 2023 Judi appeared with me at the Royal Albert Hall to talk about her life. It was 84 years later and I had found that little boy, now aged 90, and as a surprise brought him onto the stage to be reunited with Judi. She had no idea it was happening, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.Richard Eyre, directorI’m looking at a photograph of four adults and two children – young boys – lined up on one side of a large kitchen table. They are watching six clockwork chicks (it’s Easter) racing across the table. Bets have been laid; the form of the chicks is unpredictable. One charges forward then falls on its beak, one stutters in circles, one mounts the rear of another, one never moves. The faces of the players are infused with sporting passion, but one face is contorted – no, not contorted, illuminated – by demented glee. It’s Judi Dench, in an ecstasy of fun, combining three of her favourite things: love of company, love of games and love of betting. It’s perhaps not the image that most people have of someone who, as the Japanese say, is a living national treasure, but it’s closer than the weird caricature of gentility that is sometimes touted in the press – what Billy Connolly describes as “those English twittering fucking women – they think she’s one of them, and she isn’t”. I met Judi in Leicester 58 years ago, the night I directed my first theatre production. She was there for love – not for me but for her current boyfriend; my Sunday night production proved an excellent excuse for them to be together. Two years later I met her for dinner with another boyfriend… Until she married Michael, her husband of 30 years, she was always in love or falling in love, and sometimes both at the same time and usually with the wrong man, unsuitable but irresistible. She was like Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest: “What do I do? I fall in love with his double.” Judi has always called me Rich and has always been a romantic, by which I mean she believes fervently in the redeeming power of love. Being a romantic doesn’t mean she’s sentimental; in fact, in some ways she’s the opposite – clear-eyed and objective. Even in grief she’s never less than fun, but behind her genial, almost excessively generous self, she’s wholly private and often unreachable. It’s the same in her work: she fascinates by never letting you feel that you’ve glimpsed the whole character. How she does it, I don’t know. I’m just happy – along with millions of others – that she does. Eileen Atkins, actorIt’s hard not to laugh when working with Judi. We were in the TV show Cranford together. It was shot in 2007 and we were trying to get a scene done and it was taking forever. Between takes we talked about The Archers as we were both very keen listeners. Well, finally at about the fifth take everything seemed like it was going well, and so suddenly I had to say my line as Judi stepped out of a carriage. Everything was perfect. I heard myself say: “You are very welcome to Ambridge, Miss Matty.” Well, we just collapsed; we laughed so hard they had to take us off and re-do our make-up. Judi just makes everything that bit more fun.Kenneth Branagh, actorJudi Dench is game. We were appearing together in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Garrick Theatre on New Year’s Eve. We had both made family promises to see in the midnight hour and weren’t sure if either of us would make it home in time as our theatre was right by Trafalgar Square. Streets were closed off and the crowds were huge. The solution I hit on was to take a motorbike taxi out of the central area and get to the train station that way. Judi insisted on doing the same. I’m not sure what our producers would have made of seeing the 80-year-old national treasure tearing, Evel Knievel-style, through the West End and whooping. We travelled side by side, Shakespearean Wallace and Gromit, determined to make it home for the celebrations. Every time we stopped at a light, she cheered fellow revellers. “I like meeting people,” she yelled. And she does. Whether on a stage or on the back of a motorbike at 80, Judi is always game.David Hare, playwrightWhen Judi Dench was sent the script of Amy’s View, she had no idea why Richard Eyre, the director, and I wanted her to play the part of the wilful matinée actor Esme Allen. She kept telling us that it didn’t seem right for her at all. Throughout rehearsals, she maintained her confusion and bewilderment. Richard and I were reduced to the role of football commentators, babbling uselessly and unable to affect the game. Judi went into the first preview in a state of high anxiety. By the time she came off, she was exhilarated. “The audience gave me the play. They showed me her spirit. Now I understand her spirit, everything will be fine.” Amy’s View went on to the West End and Broadway where, coinciding with her Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love, it brought her the international level of fame that she has since, gloriously, maintained.Finty Williams, daughter and actorAfter M’s 81st birthday she came to stay with me in London. We left early the next morning to go shopping and I had engineered it so that we walked past the Seven Dials Tattoo shop at exactly the time they opened. I bundled her in and told her that we were getting her a birthday tattoo. She was totally up for it! I’m not sure the people in the tattoo parlour knew what had hit them. She was incredibly specific about what she wanted: the words “carpe diem” inscribed in chunky letters on the inside of her wrist, which sums her up perfectly. She hates to waste any time…Trevor Nunn, directorDame Judi has never wanted to take herself too seriously. She has always believed that a banana skin is lying in wait for anybody who gets pompous or grand. She knows, as she has often said to me, that just as you start to believe in your own self-importance, a tap on the shoulder will turn you around so that a plate of cream can get squashed into your face. She told me once about an occasion when she was being asked to be celebrated as a very special person. A community theatre building was to be renamed, and she had been persuaded that it should be called the Judi Dench Playhouse. The ceremony, in her presence, was to be performed by the local mayor. A cord would be pulled to release the sheet covering the sign bearing her name. The mayor stepped up to say a few words before the theatre name was revealed. “And so, ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to have her with us today, as we open the theatre in her name… Put your hands together and welcome… Miss Judy Geeson.” Of course, the mayor then corrected himself as embarrassment spread amongst the audience. But Judi was not in any way offended or insulted or hurt. She thought it was wonderfully funny… cream all over her face… splosh… hoots of laughter… Jude.Sharleen Spiteri, musicianJudi has such a naughtiness about her, which I absolutely love. She has the biggest glint in her eye I’ve ever seen. In January 2023 a group of us were celebrating Hogmanay at The Fife Arms in Aberdeenshire and the two of us were drunk. We were going from one room to another, and came across an automated piano playing, and we couldn’t stop laughing. She jumped on and started playing – she’s a wonderful pianist. And, of course, I drunkenly sat down beside her and started singing Abba’s “Waterloo”. The two of us were just taking the absolute mickey, we had no idea that anyone filmed us. And then we were at lunch the next day and I had my phone in my back pocket on silent, and my backside was just buzzing and buzzing. I thought, “Oh my God. What is this?” Eventually I looked, and I had all these messages from all over the world saying, “I saw you and Judi Dench singing on BBC News!” I went, “Oh no, oh no. Bloody celebrities going, ‘Hey, look at us.’” I thought it was awful, my idea of hell. I walked over to Judi and gave her my phone and she laughed and said, “God, if only we had known, we would have rehearsed!” She doesn’t care if she has a good voice, she’ll give anything a shot. There is an honesty in her voice that communicates. The wonderful thing about great people in life is they’re not scared to give anything a shot. Judi doesn’t give a shit. She’s a proper punk. You know, that’s the only way I could describe Judi. She is a punk.Stephen Frears, director and producerJudi and I always say we have made more films with each other than with anyone else. I first worked with her in 1980 on the first of our four films, a story of two men dying of cancer, Fulton Mackay and Norman Wisdom. In charge of them was Nurse Judi Dench. I always thought that, if you were dying, a good way to go would be in Judi’s arms. At the time, she would embroider a cushion for the director she was working with. She asked what words I would like to have embroidered on my cushion. I said: “Fuck ’em.” For three or four weeks she sat demurely in her starched uniform – this great, great actor, this wonderful, wonderful woman – embroidering “Fuck ’em” onto my cushion.Bally Gill, actorAllelujah was my first feature film, and when I found out that I would be acting alongside Judi, and there would be scenes just with the two of us, I was nervous. I had watched and marvelled at her from afar my whole life. Judi and I had a scene in which we discussed marginalia, which is the name for the notes people leave in the margins of books, and I decided to ask Judi whether she had ever left notes in her school books, where you would follow instructions and certain words would be circled and eventually it would spell out “you are a dick”. She laughed and laughed… Cut to Judi’s last day of filming (and her birthday), and I get back to my trailer to find a lovely big book left in there for me called The History of Marginalia. I open it to the first page, feeling awful that on her own birthday Judi had bought me a gift. I read a lovely message in there but also instructions to turn to page 10, then on page 10 to turn to page 33, and so on. On pages 10, 33 and 64, and then in the references, were circled words spelling out “you” “are” “a” “dick” (“Dickinson” with the “-inson” removed). That book has pride of place on my bookshelf. Being called a dick by Judi Dench was the most wonderful moment of my life. Brendan O’Hea, actor and co-author of The Man Who Pays the RentJudi Dench’s love of animals stems from her childhood.At one point, her parents had 14 cats and a dog all living in the family home. I’ve met quite a few of Jude’s pets over the years: Lazarus, her robust goldfish, whom she brought back to life by giving it mouth to mouth; Pâté Lapin, a rather elegant rabbit of Finty’s named in honour of Patti LuPone; and a beautiful blue-eyed ragdoll cat called Lawford who would follow Jude everywhere and sit by the gate waiting for her to come home. These days, Judi is the proud owner of a potty-mouthed parrot called Sweetie who, amongst her colourful repertoire (including swear words and a filthy laugh), can replicate the sound of a champagne bottle being uncorked and poured. I wonder to what extent animals reflect their owners…Bill Nighy, actorI was in The Seagull with Judi, and any actor who takes that call starts growing a beard as soon as he puts the phone down. I was going to be the only English actor in a Chekhov play without one. Each morning Judi would run her finger down my chin and look confused and disappointed. Helen McCrory, who had to kiss me, said: “Grow a beard and I’m coming nowhere fucking near you.” I was in the men’s room and Richard Eyre asked how it was going. I explained. He said: “Judi wants you to grow a beard? You grow a beard!” So I grew a beard. Recently I grew a beard for work and Judi now refuses to recognise me and talks to the beard, saying: “Where have you put Bill Nighy?” Ben Whishaw, actorI got to work with Judi Dench onstage in 2013 on a new play by John Logan called Peter and Alice, directed by Michael Grandage. I remember at the first performance of the play, my character is on stage already, and then Jude enters. There was an enormous round of applause and then Jude forgot her lines. I felt panicked. But Jude just looked over at me and laughed and made up some words and carried on without missing a beat. There was one line in that first scene – I forget the line now – but every time Jude said it she’d briefly give herself a hunchback and a squint like she was Richard III. It was for me, to make me laugh. It was in plain sight but somehow no one else ever seemed to notice. My favourite thing during the run was going to her dressing room before the show each night and we would run the lines and natter a little about our days. I loved seeing her make-up all laid out, and watching her get ready. Waiting in the wings every night, she’d tell me, “Sock it to ’em,” and she’d be talking away to me right up until I went on. I was used to being very quiet and focused before going on stage, but I realised for Jude it’s all the same thing: being onstage, being offstage, she’s just there, present. It sounds so simple, but then I can’t think of anyone else who is really like that. She’s a genius. I just want to be in her company. She’s the best actor in the world.Jenni Carvell, personal assistantI’ll have been with Judi for 10 years this November. I started out as her dresser in theatre, then she took me on to be her personal standby on films. These past five years I’d say I’m more her work PA, as I’m with her for everything work- or charity-related. She says I’m her eyes. I always like to be one step ahead and know what Jude needs at all times. When we were in Borneo in the middle of the jungle, I was waiting out of shot with Jude while the camera crew had gone on ahead and she turned to me and said: “Ooh, I’d love an Opal Fruit.” I reached into my bag and gave her one. I always carry her favourite treats around with me but she wasn’t expecting me to do this in the middle of the jungle. It was a funny moment. I’d do anything for her, and she’d do anything she could for everyone she loves.Naomi Donne, make-up artist I have been doing Judi’s make-up for many years. I have done four Bond films with her, and you get to know someone so well by spending that kind of time together. Whenever we work together she brings lots of snacks for all the animals. She was always overfeeding my schnauzer Stella with naughty treats – I would try to stop her but nothing could. The moment she sees an animal she swerves towards it and spoils it. When we were on Skyfall my daughter Isabella was about six and was desperate for a hamster. I was ignoring her pleas. One day Jude turned up staggering under the weight of a huge cage with a hamster she had named Hammy inside. It was fully kitted out with all the toys imaginable! It just sums Jude up: her generosity, her thoughtfulness, and her love of animals.
