Judi Dench

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Judi Dench

Profession: Actress
Place/Date of Birth: North Yorkshire , 10 December 2020

The 72-year-old actress plays Barbara Covett, a lonely schoolteacher who reveals her malevolent side when she discovers a colleague is having an affair with a 15-year-old pupil.

The film was adapted from the novel by Zoe Heller and directed by Sir Richard Eyre.

Dame Judi said: "It was one of the harder parts I have played. At the end of the day I was quite glad to get back to the person I am. I had the power to do it because of Richard Eyre. He steered me through the rougher waters of it."

The actress already has one Oscar on her mantelpiece.

She won a best supporting actress award in 1999 for her scene-stealing performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love - despite being on screen for just eight minutes.

Read more about The Oscars 2007

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Biography

Dame Judith Olivia Dench was born on December 9 1934 in York to Reginald Arthur Dench and his wife Olave. She began her career as an actress playing in the first three revival performances of the historic York Mystery Plays before training at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. Making her debut in Hamlet in Liverpool, 1967 Judi went on to appear in repertory in Oxford and Nottingham.

In 1961 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, making her name as an award winning actress playing several roles in both London and Stratford over the following twenty years. She also appeared in several non-RSC West End plays and began to appear more frequently on television, with small roles in Z Cars and The Troubleshooters.

Judi made her big screen debut in Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Terror, in 1965 which was followed in 1968 by A Midsummers Night Dream. By 1980 she was a television favourite and a shoo-in for the role of Aunt Sadie in the television adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate. Meanwhile the mid-80s brought with them films including The Browning Version and A Room With A View and the nineties saw her leading sitcom, As Time Goes By.

Still racking up the stage awards Judi is now the movie industry’s go-to woman for the part of ’older lady’, be it playing Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria or a Shakespearean dame. She has clocked up the awards and acclaim for films such as Mrs Brown, Shakespeare in Love, The Importance of Being Ernest and Mrs Henderson Presents. Her appearances as M in recent James Bond films and as the spooky Barbara in Notes on a Scandal have proved that she is so much more than the period actress she is often seen as.

Married to fellow actor Michael Williams in 1971 (he died of lung cancer in 2001), Judi has one daughter, Tara Cressida Williams. Awarded the OBE in 1970 she is also president of the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London.
updates January 2007
July 2007