SHE may have had an acting career that spans almost 60 years, but Dame Judi Dench has confessed she has watched barely any of the dozens of films she has made over her lifetime.

Dench was speaking to Prince Edward in St James’s Palace on June 23 at an event celebrating the organisation Films Without Borders, a charity that teaches young people around the world the skills to make and produce films, and offers international internships on major film sets. George Lucas, Sam Mendes and Whoopi Goldberg spoke to the prince at a similar event in Windsor Castle last year.

Presented with a montage of clips taken from films from throughout her award-littered career, including Mrs Brown, Tea With Mussolini, Iris and Shakespeare in Love, Dench laughingly told the prince that it was the first time she had seen many of them.

“I still don’t think it is very easy watching yourself and I haven’t seen most of my films,” she said. “I find when it comes to it, actually seeing what your choice was with a role, you suddenly think it was the wrong choice to have made. But it’s too late then. It’s not like the theatre, where I could have another go the next night.”

During the brief interview, Dench, who is 80, spoke about some of the highlights of her varied film career, including Mrs Brown in 1997, in which she played a bereaved Queen Victoria, a role she described as “pivotal”.

Referencing her various turns as historical British royals in both theatre and film, Dench said to Prince Edward: “I suppose I’ve got a lot to thank your family for.”

Working with Billy Connolly on the set of Mrs Brown was “sublime”, she said, drawing parallels between Connolly and Steve Coogan, with whom she worked on Philomena.

“Billy’s an absolutely brilliant standup. We were huge fans of his beforehand and that made me very nervous,” recalled Dench. “I thought of him as a comic, but then he came on the set and he knew everything there was to know about playing that part. He showed us all the way — just as Steve Coogan did in Philomena. It’s not fair, is it — to be so good at standup and then come on set and wipe the floor with everybody?”

Dench also spoke fondly of her 17 years playing M in the Bond films, but said she would “never get over being so bossy”.

As well as her successes, Prince Edward also tentatively asked the veteran actor about the “one or two more peculiar choices” she had made over the years. “Flops, you mean?” asked Dench, who laughed and added: “You’re not going to mention the Chronicles of Riddick are you? I’ve never watched it and I don’t think many other people have.”

Describing how she came to take the part of Aareon in the sci-fi action film, Dench said that Vin Diesel had turned up at her dressing room when she was performing in the West End, with a bouquet of flowers “so long they couldn’t get it up the stairs”.

“Well, you can’t say no to a man like that,” Dench said.

She also revealed that she has finished filming on Tim Burton’s latest film, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, in which she plays a long-legged bird, Miss Avocet. With a role in The Winter’s Tale, as part of Kenneth Branagh’s takeover of the Garrick theatre in the West End this year, Dench was adamant that she had no intention of giving up acting as long as she “keeps being asked”.

“I like doing something different every time,” she added. “I’d like to play an animal that turns into something — I’d love that if anyone’s got the part?”

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2015

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