Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Judi Dench\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u00a0a large inglenook fire are the first things you see when you enter via an old wooden door. \u201cMind your head!\u201d she\u2019s always crying out. Visitors wipe their feet on a 007 doormat that reads \u201cI\u2019ve been expecting\u00a0you, Mr Bond\u201d \u2013 a gift from her grandson Sammie (she played the role of M a total of eight times).\u00a0The house is filled with her history: a doctor\u2019s office chair comes from her father\u2019s 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\u00a0also 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. \u201cIsn\u2019t he marvellous?\u201d she gushes. \u201cI gave him to my grandson Sammie for Christmas. I ask how old\u00a0Sam is. \u201cTwenty-seven!\u201d she replies \u2013 that unique voice still vibrant and always gusty with laughter.\u00a0Dench 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\u00a0vase of red roses and a framed note from Alan Bennett. She describes all the projects she\u2019s still working on \u2013 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\u2019Hea. \u201cIt\u2019s called The Man Who Pays The Rent \u2013 because he has!\u201d 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\u2019s speech to Brutus in Julius Caesar, learned as a child from her older brother, Jeff. \u201cHe was 11 and I was seven!\u201d \u00a0She knows she is lucky to have \u201call that Shakespeare\u201d in her head. She watches programmes that keep her brain\u00a0active. \u201cI adore University Challenge and Only Connect,\u201d she says, before producing a bag of extra-large\u00a0Bananagrams, which she can still see despite her failing sight. \u201cMaggie [Smith] and I always used to play Scrabble and then we were sent these. Go on!\u201d she says,\u00a0tipping the letters onto the table. \u201cPick out two letters at a time and let\u2019s see how many famous names we\u00a0can make?\u201d She\u2019s very good.\u00a0I imagine she has provided many wonderful meals for friends over the years in the warm welcome of her kitchen. \u201cGod! No! I hate it, I\u2019m a dreadful cook!\u201d she cries. \u201cMy late agent was Julian Belfrage \u2013 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: \u2018Well, Jude, I\u2019ll tell you one thing, you didn\u2019t get your OBE for cooking!\u2019\u201dJudi 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 \u2013 John Gielgud, Stephen Sondheim, Helen McCrory, her next-door neighbour Ian and best school friend Joanne.\u00a0\u201cI have always loved being around people,\u201d she tells me. \u201cBy doing this they are always with me. Look over there\u201d \u2013 she points, although she can barely see now \u2013 \u201calongside the hedge. Can you see the tiny tree over there? It\u2019s 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.\u201dMaggie 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\u00a0Scandal and Iris, remembers working with the actors on The Breath of Life by David Hare. \u201cJude 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 \u2018deafened\u2019 by the thundering of all her friends\u2019 footsteps pounding up the stairs each night.\u201dDench 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. \u201cThey will all behave well, because everyone does in Judi\u2019s\u00a0presence, because she always behaves impeccably,\u201d said Robert. And of course they did. Neither was there a shortage of stories about this remarkable talent, this terrific woman, this gifted storyteller \u2013 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,\u00a0her audiences, who would like to be her friend. This\u00a0means that whatever company of actors she is working with, she will effortlessly be the pack leader, alert to everyone\u2019s 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 matin\u00e9e of The Promise, our first job together at the Oxford Playhouse, in 1966. \u201cCome in!\u201d \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 she thinks she was six years old \u2013 she remembers sitting on the garden wall with David and he said to her, \u201cI think we should call each other darling.\u201d I asked Judi if she would call him her first boyfriend and she replied, \u201cIt was just play-acting!\u201d In 2023 Judi appeared with me at the Royal Albert Hall to talk\u00a0about 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\u2019t a dry eye in the house.Richard Eyre, directorI\u2019m looking at a photograph of four adults and two children \u2013 young boys \u2013 lined up on one side of a large kitchen table. They are watching six clockwork chicks (it\u2019s 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 \u2013 no, not contorted, illuminated \u2013 by demented glee. It\u2019s Judi Dench, in\u00a0an ecstasy of fun, combining three of her favourite things: love of company, love of games and love of betting. It\u2019s perhaps not the image that most people have of someone who, as the Japanese say, is a living national treasure, but it\u2019s closer than the weird caricature of gentility that is sometimes touted in the press\u00a0\u2013 what Billy Connolly describes as \u201cthose English twittering fucking women \u2013 they think she\u2019s one of them, and she isn\u2019t\u201d. I met Judi in Leicester 58 years ago, the night I directed my first theatre production. She was there for love \u2013 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\u00a0boyfriend… Until she married Michael, her husband of 30\u00a0years, 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: \u201cWhat do I do? I fall in love with his double.\u201d Judi has always called me Rich and has always been a\u00a0romantic, by which I mean she believes fervently in the redeeming power of love. Being a romantic doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s sentimental; in\u00a0fact, in some ways she\u2019s the opposite \u2013 clear-eyed and objective. Even in grief she\u2019s never less than fun, but behind her genial, almost excessively generous\u00a0self, she\u2019s wholly private and often unreachable. It\u2019s the same in her work: she fascinates by never letting you feel that you\u2019ve glimpsed the whole character. How she does it, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m just happy \u2013 along with millions of others \u2013 that she does.\u00a0Eileen Atkins, actorIt\u2019s hard not to laugh when working with Judi. We were in\u00a0the TV show Cranford together. It was shot in 2007 and we\u00a0were trying to get a scene done and it was taking forever.\u00a0Between takes we talked about The Archers as we\u00a0were both\u00a0very keen listeners. Well, finally at about the fifth take everything seemed like it was going well, and so\u00a0suddenly I had to say my line as Judi stepped out of a carriage. Everything was perfect. I heard myself say: \u201cYou are very welcome to Ambridge, Miss Matty.\u201d Well, we just collapsed; we laughed so hard they had to take us off\u00a0and 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\u2019s The Winter\u2019s Tale at the Garrick Theatre on New Year\u2019s Eve. We had both made family promises to see in the midnight hour and weren\u2019t 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\u2019m not sure what our producers would have made\u00a0of 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. \u201cI like meeting people,\u201d 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\u2019s View, she had no idea why Richard Eyre, the director, and I wanted her to play the part of the wilful matin\u00e9e actor Esme Allen. She kept telling us that it didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 By the time she came off, she was exhilarated. \u201cThe audience gave me the play. They showed me her spirit. Now I understand her spirit, everything will be fine.\u201d Amy\u2019s 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\u2019s 81st birthday she came to stay with me in London.\u00a0We left early the next morning to go shopping and\u00a0I had engineered it so that we walked past the Seven\u00a0Dials Tattoo\u00a0shop at exactly the time they opened. I\u00a0bundled\u00a0her\u00a0in and told her that we were getting her a\u00a0birthday tattoo. She was totally up for it! I\u2019m not sure the people in the tattoo parlour knew what had hit them. She was incredibly specific about what she wanted: the words \u201ccarpe diem\u201d inscribed in chunky letters on the inside of\u00a0her wrist, which sums her up perfectly. She hates\u00a0to waste any time\u2026Trevor Nunn, directorDame Judi has never wanted to take herself too\u00a0seriously. She has always believed that a\u00a0banana 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\u00a0me 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\u00a0she had been persuaded that it should be called the Judi Dench Playhouse. The ceremony, in her presence, was\u00a0to 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\u00a0a few words before the theatre name was revealed. \u201cAnd so, ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to have her with us today, as we open the theatre in her name\u2026 Put your hands together and welcome\u2026 Miss Judy Geeson.\u201d Of course, the mayor then corrected himself as embarrassment spread amongst the\u00a0audience. But Judi was not in any way offended or insulted or hurt. She thought it\u00a0was wonderfully funny\u2026 cream all over her face\u2026 splosh\u2026\u00a0hoots of laughter\u2026 Jude.Sharleen Spiteri, musicianJudi has such a naughtiness about her, which I absolutely love. She has the biggest glint in her eye I\u2019ve 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\u2019t stop laughing. She jumped on and started playing \u2013 she\u2019s a wonderful pianist. And, of course, I drunkenly sat down beside her and started singing Abba\u2019s \u201cWaterloo\u201d. The two of\u00a0us 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, \u201cOh my God. What is this?\u201d Eventually I looked, and I had all these messages from all over the world saying, \u201cI saw you and Judi Dench singing on BBC News!\u201d I went, \u201cOh no, oh no. Bloody celebrities going, \u2018Hey, look at us.\u2019\u201d I thought it\u00a0was awful, my idea of hell. I walked over to Judi and gave her my phone and she laughed and said, \u201cGod, if only we had known, we would have rehearsed!\u201d She doesn\u2019t care if she has a good voice, she\u2019ll give anything a shot. There is an\u00a0honesty in her voice that communicates. The wonderful thing about great people in life is they\u2019re not scared to give anything a shot. Judi doesn\u2019t give a shit. She\u2019s a proper punk. You know,\u00a0that\u2019s the only way\u00a0I could describe Judi. She is a punk.Stephen Frears, director and\u00a0producerJudi and I always say we have made more films with each other than with anyone else. I\u00a0first worked with her in 1980 on the first of our four films, a story of two\u00a0men 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\u2019s arms. At the time, she would embroider a cushion for the director she was working with. She asked what words I would like to\u00a0have embroidered on my cushion. I said: \u201cFuck \u2019em.\u201d For\u00a0three or four weeks she sat demurely in her starched uniform\u00a0 \u2013 this great, great actor, this wonderful, wonderful woman \u2013 embroidering \u201cFuck \u2019em\u201d 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,\u00a0which is the name for the notes people leave in\u00a0the margins of books, and I decided to\u00a0ask 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 \u201cyou are a dick\u201d. She laughed and laughed\u2026 Cut to Judi\u2019s 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\u00a0page, feeling awful that on her own birthday Judi had bought me a gift. I\u00a0read a lovely message in there but also\u00a0instructions to turn\u00a0to page 10, then on page 10 to turn\u00a0to\u00a0page 33, and so on. On pages 10, 33 and 64, and then in the references, were\u00a0circled words spelling out \u201cyou\u201d \u201care\u201d \u201ca\u201d \u201cdick\u201d (\u201cDickinson\u201d with the \u201c-inson\u201d removed). That book has pride of place on my bookshelf. Being called a dick by Judi\u00a0Dench was the most wonderful moment of my life.\u00a0Brendan O\u2019Hea, actor and co-author of The\u00a0Man\u00a0Who Pays the RentJudi Dench\u2019s love of animals stems from her childhood.At\u00a0one point, her parents had 14 cats and a\u00a0dog all\u00a0living in\u00a0the\u00a0family home. I\u2019ve met quite a few of Jude\u2019s pets over\u00a0the years: Lazarus, her robust goldfish, whom she brought back to life\u00a0by giving it mouth to mouth; P\u00e2t\u00e9 Lapin, a rather elegant rabbit of Finty\u2019s named in honour of\u00a0Patti LuPone; and a beautiful blue-eyed ragdoll cat called\u00a0Lawford who would\u00a0follow Jude everywhere and sit\u00a0by the gate waiting for her to come home. These days, Judi is the proud owner of a potty-mouthed parrot called\u00a0Sweetie who, amongst her\u00a0colourful repertoire (including swear words and a filthy laugh), can replicate the\u00a0sound of a champagne bottle being\u00a0uncorked and poured. I wonder to what extent animals reflect their owners\u2026Bill 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\u00a0Chekhov 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: \u201cGrow a beard and I\u2019m\u00a0coming nowhere fucking near you.\u201d I was in the men\u2019s room and Richard Eyre asked how\u00a0it was going. I explained. He said: \u201cJudi wants you to\u00a0grow a beard? You grow a beard!\u201d So I grew a beard.\u00a0 Recently I grew a beard for work and Judi now refuses\u00a0to\u00a0recognise me and talks to the beard, saying: \u201cWhere have you put Bill Nighy?\u201d\u00a0Ben 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\u00a0first performance of\u00a0the play, my character is on stage already, and then Jude\u00a0enters. There was an enormous round of applause and then Jude forgot her lines. I felt panicked. But Jude just\u00a0looked over at me and laughed and made up some words and carried on without missing a beat. There was\u00a0one line in that first scene \u2013 I forget the line now \u2013 but every time Jude said it she\u2019d briefly give herself a hunchback and a squint like she was Richard III. It was for me, to\u00a0make me laugh. It was in plain sight but somehow no one\u00a0else ever seemed to notice. My favourite thing during the run was going to her dressing room before the show each night and\u00a0we would run the lines and natter a little about our days.\u00a0I loved seeing her make-up all laid out, and watching her get ready. Waiting in the wings every night, she\u2019d tell me, \u201cSock it to \u2019em,\u201d and she\u2019d 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\u2019s all the same thing: being onstage, being offstage, she\u2019s just there, present. It sounds so simple,\u00a0but then I can\u2019t think of anyone else who is really like that. She\u2019s a genius. I just want to be in her company. She\u2019s the best actor in the world.Jenni Carvell, personal assistantI\u2019ll 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\u2019d say I\u2019m more her work PA, as I\u2019m with her for everything work- or charity-related. She says I\u2019m her eyes. I always like to be one\u00a0step ahead and know what Jude needs at\u00a0all times. When we were in Borneo in the middle\u00a0of the jungle, I\u00a0was waiting out of shot with Jude while the camera crew had gone on ahead and she turned to me and said: \u201cOoh, I\u2019d love an Opal Fruit.\u201d I reached into my bag and gave her one. I always carry her favourite treats around with me but she wasn\u2019t expecting me to do\u00a0this in the middle of the jungle. It was a funny moment. I\u2019d\u00a0do anything for her, and she\u2019d do anything she could for everyone she loves.Naomi Donne, make-up artist\u00a0I have been doing Judi\u2019s 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 \u2013 I would try to stop her\u00a0but 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\u00a0a 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Judi Dench\u2019s 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\u2019s where she and her late husband, the actor Michael Williams, brought up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-215175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215177,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215175\/revisions\/215177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}