Behind the Scenes (9781466882195) Read online

  left to right: me, Kenneth Branagh, Susannah Harker

  Volumnia in Coriolanus with Kenneth Branagh, Chichester, 1992

  The Gift of the Gorgon was one of the most difficult plays I ever had to tackle. It had wonderful reviews, and Finty was so bowled over by it that she couldn’t come round afterwards. Because of the names of our characters, and the fact that Michael and I had played Mirabell and Millamant, we always refer to ourselves as Mr and Mrs Plum.

  Mr & Mrs Damson with Michael Pennington in The Gift of the Gorgon, Barbican and Wyndham’s Theatre, 1992

  Ken Branagh admired Sir John Gielgud as much as the rest of us, and proposed this Renaissance co-production of King Lear to BBC Radio 3 to mark Sir John’s ninetieth birthday on 14 April 1994. He assembled a wonderful all-star cast, including Simon Callow, Derek Jacobi, Norman Rodway, Iain Glen, Sheila Hancock, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, Nicholas Farrell, Maurice Denham, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Samantha Bond. Even Peter Hall was persuaded to play the tiny part of the Herald. Ken played Edmund, and I was Goneril.

  With Anthony Page in rehearsal for the TV production of Absolute Hell, 1991

  I so enjoyed doing Absolute Hell for television that I said to Tony Page, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to do this in the theatre?’ Four years later he and I did it at the National, with a different cast.

  My favourite play, Absolute Hell, had been savaged by the critics at its premiere in 1952 and neglected since. The author Rodney Ackland came along to see the TV recording just before he died, and he said to me very touchingly afterwards, ‘I didn’t realise I had written such a good play.’

  This picture says it all about the character. I would like to be going to do that play tonight. In the nightclub we were only drinking coloured water, but Greg Hicks and I used to get completely stotious, rolling about on the floor. It was like one endless party.

  I loved Peter Woodthorpe so much, ever since we were together at the RSC. He was wonderful as Toad. When he played the Doge in The Merchant of Venice he said to us, ‘Well, I’m having a strop, because Terry Hands has put me in this chair, and they can’t see the cut of my costume!’ He sat in it all through lunch, as a protest!

  Christine Foskett in Absolute Hell, and with Peter Woodthorpe in rehearsal, Lyttelton Theatre, 1995

  Desirée with Laurence Guittard as Fredrik in A Little Night Music, Olivier Theatre, 1995

  Desirée with Laurence Guittard as Fredrik in A Little Night Music, Olivier Theatre, 1995

  I fell down twice during the run of A Little Night Music. In ‘You Must Meet My Wife’ there was one moment where Larry Guittard was crossing towards the band and I slipped, he turned round to face me and he couldn’t find me. I was underneath the chaise longue.

  A Little Night Music, Olivier Theatre, 1995

  You start to play a part and you get so immersed in it, trying to get it right, that you forget the responsibility of being passed that part to play, because it takes up all your energies and all your anxieties. We had a very merry time doing it.

  Brendon O’Hea and I developed ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ as our cabaret act for the party after the last night of A Little Night Music at the National, and then we did it at this club near Seven Dials for the charity West End Cares. We had a very good time, but we mustn’t do it anymore, because I am now sixteen going on eighty, as Brendan keeps reminding me.

  ‘Miss Dench you have every single thing wrong with your face.’ That was the crushing verdict of the film producer who gave me my very first screen test back in the 1950s. It put me off films for a long time, and my few early excursions into the cinema did little to change my mind. Television seemed to be much more fun, from an early Z-Cars episode to the later situation comedies I so enjoyed. Even my first big-screen success – Mrs Brown – began life as a project for TV.

  Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown with Billy Connolly as John Brown, 1997

  This was the most difficult scene in Mrs Brown. It took twenty-one takes because the horses misbehaved, and my heavy skirts kept getting caught on the pommel as Billy Connolly lifted me down, and then our radio mics became entangled. It was a very important scene too, as it’s their closest moment in the entire film, when the Queen refuses to let John Brown resign:

  I cannot allow it because I cannot live without you.

  Without you, I cannot find the strength to be who I must be.

  If Billy was nervous there was no sign of it. He was just fantastic from the word go. At the end of a day’s filming we’d all go off for showers, then we’d meet in the bar and have a drink, and Billy would sit down with a pot of tea on a tray in front of him, and then sometimes he’d just start telling stories. I would be looking at my watch and thinking, ‘Can I do tomorrow’s filming on just five and a half hours’ sleep?’ We’d be absolutely weeping with laughter, and I’d look at my watch again and think, ‘Can I do it on four and a half hours?’

  John Madden, the director, watches us rehearse

  Half the local gentry turned out to play the staff at Balmoral in Mrs Brown, as the extras had to be able to dance the Eightsome Reels expertly. Billy Connolly danced it as if to the manner born.

  Rather fittingly, Finty played Princess Helena, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters.

  Sammy hated his kilt when he was dressed for the part at Billy’s. ‘Off skirt, off,’ he kept saying, as soon as we put it on him. It was a bit better when he got the skean dhu. Now he’s fine about it.

  With Michael and Finty at the premiere of Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

  I never thought about what a huge responsibility I had in playing ‘M’. I think I was just really excited about it, and Michael and Finty were absolutely mad about it – ‘a Bond-woman.’ It was lovely working with Pierce Brosnan. I didn’t get to any exotic locations, not in seven Bond films. All I got was Stowe School, very nice but not abroad, and a trailer labelled Innsbruck.

  M in The World is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan as Bond, 1999

  Situation comedy is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You don’t get a preview, you get one chance to get it right. In A Fine Romance Michael had a sure touch about it, he used to know exactly, and Geoffrey – if you want to know about playing comedy on television, just look as far as Geoffrey Palmer.

  We kept thinking we were doing the last series, but then Bob Larbey would write another one and Syd Lotterby always had such a lovely crew to work with. Even after we finally called it a day in 2002, we were suddenly asked back to make two Specials for Christmas 2005.

  Jean in As Time Goes By with Geoffrey Palmer as Lionel, 1991–2002

  The most hair-raising bit of all when filming a sitcom is when you have to go out in front of an audience and say hello to them; that’s more taxing than doing the rest of the show.

  As Time Goes By, 1991–2002

  Geoffrey Palmer is fishing mad. In fact, it’s often quite difficult to get him to work as he’s always chasing the mayfly! So I bought him this special catch. It takes a lot of people behind the cameras to put even just a couple of us on the screen. On the next page you can see how many. The director Syd Lotterby (in the armchair front left) managed to get most of the same team together for each series, and a lot of them came back for two Christmas Specials in 2005. Syd has directed every single episode and they really all do it for him. So do we.

  Ian Richardson and I had just taken part in a big fundraising gala for the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in 1996. The rehearsal seemed to go on for ever and didn’t end until 6.30 p.m. So I went round all the dressing rooms, collecting guesses at fifty pence a go, on what time the actual gala performance would finish. Then we had a party onstage afterwards, and it looks here as if Ian might have won the jackpot.

  The ABSA (now known as Arts & Business) Awards are usually held at the National Theatre, and often the Guest of Honour is a member of the Royal Family. As members of the National Theatre Company at the time, Edward Petheridge and I were presented to the Princess of Wales.

  Our first holiday i
n Barbados was wonderfully relaxing. We read something like twenty-seven books in this amazingly short time. We just lay about, and read, and slept. I wasn’t allowed to get a tan though, because of a part coming up, so here I am avoiding the sun.

  I won the Tony (the Antoinette Perry Award) for Amy’s View on Broadway in 1999. Finty came over and we all got ready in my dressing room at the Barrymore Theater.

  Three generations of Williamses when Sammy was just two weeks old

  Finty and Sammy

  We had a lovely christening party for Sammy, but it looks as if at least two of us needed a rest after it!

  For Michael’s birthday one year, I gave him this armillary sphere, which tells the time like a sundial. I had it made with all our initials and names on it, and Sammy was born just beforehand, so his name was added. Michael loved it. For my birthday, Finty had a ring of stone put round it inscribed with, ‘When we are together, there is nothing we cannot achieve’, which is something Michael used to say. When I came home for my birthday there were a lot of friends here and a trail of red wool all the way down through the meadow to the sphere; it was a beautiful surprise.

  I loved playing Esmé in David Hare’s play Amy’s View at the National and then had a thrilling time on Broadway with it, but it didn’t start out like that. For the very first time in my career I found I couldn’t just pick up the lines in rehearsal and had to really work at it. I used to come home, say hello to Mike, go up and run a bath, and get into the bath with the script. I would spend an hour in the bath, just trying to learn a page. I don’t like working like that, but it was a necessity. David attended nearly all the rehearsals and was a most encouraging audience for us, as he laughed at all the jokes.

  Esmé in Amy’s View with Samantha Bond as Amy, Lyttelton Theatre and Aldwych, 1997

  In rehearsal with Richard Eyre and David Hare

  John Timbers took this picture of me making up for Amy’s View the night before I flew off to my first Oscar ceremony.

  As caricatured by Clive Francis

  ‘I feel for only eight minutes on the screen I should only get a little bit of him.’

  I never expected to win the Oscar. Then, just before it was announced by Robin Williams, whom we’d met at Billy Connolly’s, Michael squeezed my hand and said, ‘Watch out, I think this is you.’ I don’t remember very much after that except Robin curtsying. I gave the Oscar to Michael to bring home and I went to the airport in Los Angeles, as I was flying to New York for Amy’s View.

  When he got back home he took Oscar to the pub!

  Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, 1998

  Off-set on Tea with Mussolini

  Franco Zeffirelli’s film Tea with Mussolini was the first time I worked with Joan Plowright and we became great friends. The dog always looked at its trainer off-set whichever way we were looking in front of the camera. Finty and Sammy came out to Italy to join me, and we all took it in turns pushing the pram in the evening.

  Arabella in Tea with Mussolini with Joan Plowright, 1999

  I love this picture. It was so nice to work with Franco Zeffirelli again, so many years after Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic. Joan Plowright refused to stay in the hotel we were booked into in Rome, saying: ‘My dear, it’s a knocking-shop, I heard a couple of them at it as I went upstairs!’ She took me off to the magnificent Hotel Eden, where Maggie Smith joined us; the production company weren’t at all happy about paying the extra cost, but gave in when we went on strike about doing any press interviews until they did.

  With Franco Zeffirelli and Joan Plowright at the premiere of Tea with Mussolini, 1999

  Filumena with Michael Pennington as Domenico, Piccadilly, 1998

  I had a line in Eduardo de Filippo’s play Filumena, ‘I don’t suppose you know those hovels in San Giviniello, in Vergine, in Forcella, Tribunale, Palinetto…’ and I totally dried on the First Night. Fortunately I had just come back from filming Tea with Mussolini in Italy, so I said instead, ‘…in Fusilli, Vermicelli, Valpolicella…’ a lot of wine and food, mostly pasta, because I’d been having it for nearly three months. Not many people seemed to notice, but a couple of the critics recognised that something had gone wrong.

  I was involved in Men in Scarlet, the son et lumière about the Chelsea Pensioners in 2000. At the press conference on the opening night one young man asked unwisely why we had all bothered to take part in such a show, and Ian Richardson barked back, ‘Because these men are all heroes!’ He was in sparkling form and kept us all amused as you can see.

  Ian Richardson makes everyone laugh. Left to right: John Miller (producer), Ian Richardson, Martin Jarvis, Sir Jeremy Mackenzie (Governor of the Royal Hospital) and a helpless me

  The developers of this site on the South Bank discovered the foundations of what proved to be the Rose Theatre, quite near the site of the Globe Theatre, also from the time of Shakespeare. The archaeologists found that the tiring-house faced the other way from what had previously been thought, and the hazelnuts in the floor were something to do with the drainage. When the builders proposed to bring the lorries in and demolish these foundations we all planned to lie down in front of them to stop them. We picked up Peggy Ashcroft very early that morning from her house in Hampstead, and brought her down to the Rose. They certainly weren’t going to drive over her, and the site was preserved for viewing under the new building above it. She was a wonderfully forthright person, and a dear friend. Dustin Hoffman was also at this protest, and I reminded him of it when we were filming together in 2014.

  Reopening the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 2000 was such a lovely day. Michael and I went back to Stratford so often after we had moved away, we spent so many happy years there; we were thrilled to be asked to cut the ribbon on this occasion, even if that proved a little more difficult in practice than we had anticipated.

  With Peggy Ashcroft and Michael at the site of the original Rose Theatre, 15 May 1989

  With Michael at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 2000

  With Richard Eyre at the Bafta Fellowship Awards, 2001

  I was very worried about the BAFTA Fellowship Award evening in 2001 but Billy Connolly and Jim Broadbent made it easier by sending me up rotten. Jim said he hoped he had got my career back on track with Iris and described discovering what he called, ‘the real Judi. Who of you knew, for instance, that she is over six foot tall and massively built? How many of you are aware that her strong Birmingham-Russian accent, which she so valiantly struggles to overcome in her stage and screen work, is in real life almost impenetrable? And it is a mark of her extreme professionalism that it was the very last week of filming before I even realised she had a prosthetic limb.’ I’m glad there were a few jokers. Mind you, quite a lot of Billy’s jokes had to be edited out before the show could be broadcast.

  When I won the BAFTA Best Actress Award for Mrs Brown in 1998, it was stolen before I had even left the hotel at the end of the evening. BAFTA replaced it so quickly I wondered if this happened all the time. It just shows you can’t be too careful.

  With Billy Connolly and John Hurt at the BAFTA Fellowship Awards, 2001

  With Toby Stephens in The Royal Family, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 2001

  We enjoyed ourselves so much in The Royal Family. Here Toby Stephens and I are both being a bit over-dramatic. Toby played it very Douglas Fairbanks – a lot of swashbuckling on the stairs.

  Celebrating Sammy’s second birthday in New York at my apartment at the Sutton, when I was doing Amy’s View on Broadway. I adore this picture.

  I took this picture on the shore at Eriska overlooking Lismore and I love it. I think this visit started Sammy’s feelings for Scotland too – he loves to go back there.

  The costumes in The Importance of Being Earnest were incredible. I was wearing two foxes who looked as if they were having a fight over my shoulders. I couldn’t get into any car to go up from the car park to the house, because my hat was so high, so they gave me a wonderful golf buggy. One of the l
ocals must have seen me, because a friend of Geoffrey Palmer’s, Ivor Herbert, sent me a copy of the parish magazine which recorded in its diary:

  Spotted at West Wycombe:

  5 Buzzards riding the wind over village (23 May)

  Fox crossing West Wycombe Hill Road, A4010 side, 8.45 a.m. (24 May)

  Bar-Headed Geese, Lang Meadow (28 May)

  Heard Cuckoo in flight, West Wycombe Hill, 8.30 a.m. (31 May)

  Long-eared owl, A4010 side of West Wycombe Hill (3 June)

  Dame Judi Dench in costume, main gate of Park (6 June)

  Stoat chasing rabbit in the cricket meadow (8 June)

  I loved the billing – after the long-eared owl, but before the stoat.

  Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, 2001

  Rupert Everett was adorable to play opposite in The Importance of Being Earnest, and great fun.