Dame Judi Dench

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2015

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dame Judi Dench.

Born into a family with dramatic leanings, she followed one of her older brothers, Jeffery, to drama school. Having abandoned ideas of becoming a set designer, she made her professional debut as Ophelia at the Old Vic in 1957. An illustrious stage career followed in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet in 1960, in Cabaret in 1968 and as Lady Macbeth for Trevor Nunn in 1976. On TV she found huge success in sitcoms - appearing with her husband, the late Michael Williams, in A Fine Romance and with Geoffrey Palmer in As Time Goes By.

She received an Oscar nomination for her first big-screen part as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown; Shakespeare in Love won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; Mrs Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal, Iris, and Philomena followed. She played the part of 'M' in the James Bond films seven times and is about to appear as Paulina in Sir Kenneth Branagh's production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

Married to Michael Williams for 30 years, their daughter, Finty, is also an actress.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. Oh, My castaway this week is Dame Judy Dench. In an attempt to avoid obsequiousness, I'll state the facts as we know them.
0:42.0	She has been acting for 58 years and counting. Her work ranges
0:45.5	across theatre, television and film. If you're planning on buying her a birthday gift, don't
0:50.0	make it a door stop. She has 11 BAFSA, 7 Olivier, a Tony, two golden globes and an Oscar.
0:55.4	Oh and Street slang now has the word Dench to describe something that's particularly cool.
1:01.2	From the stage of the National Theatre to the screen of the multiplex cinema,
1:05.2	subtlety and humanity characterize her work. Put simply, audiences love to watch her.
1:10.8	She, by contrast, abhors watching herself and has never seen many of her most noted
1:15.9	performances. What does she put her sustained success down to? Well, she says, Fear generates in you a huge energy. You can use it. When I feel that
1:26.6	mounting fear, I think, oh yes, there it is. It's like petrol. And petrol does then, Dame Judy, have a, you know, a hazardous quality.
1:35.8	And I'm wondering if this fear has...
1:38.0	Yes.
1:39.0	Does it have to be carefully handled your fear?
1:42.0	Well, I think it does generate in you enormous energy and I think
1:48.7	it's much more frightening the longer you do it. Why is that?
1:53.0	I think at the beginning you're not so aware of what the pitfalls are and you rather blithely go into it thinking
2:00.3	when I've got this part how lucky and I'll just go on and play it you know and
2:04.8	it's only later that you suddenly realize after doing so much that we'll in a way more is expected of you and that makes it then more hazardous.
2:17.7	And is that more true in live performance?
	...

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