Judi Dench - And Furthermore

I am eternally grateful to all my friends and colleagues in the profession who have made my career such a happy and fulfilling one; many of them are named in these pages, and to the many others who are not I proffer my apologies as well as my thanks. Sadly some of them are no longer with us, and I miss them all.

For their permission to quote them, my particular thanks to John Moffatt for his poem, to David Hare for his letter, and to Trevor Nunn for his Address at my husband Michaels funeral. I am also grateful to John Miller for his help, not least in checking many of the details against my occasionally patchy memory. I would like to express my thanks to Ion Trewin for inviting me to write this book, for his patience when I hesitated about seeing it through to completion, and for his meticulous editing of the manuscript.

Finally, I must pay special tribute to my daughter Finty and my grandson Sammy for all their love and support, and to whom I have dedicated And Furthermore.

19341957

I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE THAT it is more than half a century since I first stepped on to the stage of the Old Vic Theatre, and into a way of life that has brought me the most rewarding professional relationships and friendships. I cannot imagine now ever doing anything else with my life except acting, but it was not something that I actually planned when I was growing up. That may seem strange, as my whole family was deeply involved in theatre in one way or another.

My father was a doctor in general practice, but spent much of his spare time acting with the Settlement Players, a very good amateur group in York. He and my mother were keen theatre-goers, so my elder brothers and I were taken to the theatre from a very early age. When I saw the celebrated farce Cuckoo in the Nest by Ben Travers, I laughed so much when a man jumped up in a laundry basket at the end of a bed wearing those combinations they called longjohns, that I thought I would have some kind of fit. In fact I think my mother must have decided that I really was going to have a fit, because I was taken home at the interval, and only brought back the next night to see the second half of the play. We went to Peter Pan at Leeds, and when we came home I said, Couldnt we fix some wires up in the waiting room, and I could come flying in from the consulting room to the waiting room? My parents must have been in despair.

Daddy was a fine actor, and a marvellous after-dinner speaker; with a great sense of timing. He had the ease of an Irishman in telling stories, and he had a brilliant sense of humour. He was actually born in Dorset, but brought up in Dublin, and only moved to York after he married. He was so very grounded as a doctor. I used to go visiting patients with him, and as he turned into roads the children used to come and hold on to the car. He became really very popular as a GP, and we hardly ever saw him at any meals, because he was always out delivering babies. People still come up to me and say, You wont believe this, but your father delivered me as a baby. I always try to look surprised.

Mummy also acted occasionally, but more often was responsible for the costumes. Once they went to a party with Daddy as Shakespeare and Mummy as Elizabeth I, and she made the most incredible dress for the Queen. They were also in a film about Dick Turpins ride to York, and I still have the picture of the two of them on the stairs at home. A man called Wilson, who taught me to ride, was in the film with them, and he left us a box of costumes from it, with various bodices and skirts.

Mummy could whip up anything, and after I had seen the Laurence Olivier film of Henry V I longed to go to a fancy-dress party as the Princess of France, so she made me the most beautiful dress, with cotton-wool all round the sleeve marked like ermine. I made the headdress that I had seen Rene Asherson wearing, with a piece of netting round my head and a ruler through the top. It looked absolutely terrific. (It never crossed my mind that one day I would play that part onstage.) Over the years there were all sorts of things that had just got put in the ottoman, which we were always digging through; I just thought that all families got dressed up like that.

When the Settlement Players did Christopher Frys The Firstborn I played Tuesret, the pharaohs daughter. Christopher became a great friend years later, and I rather regret that is the only time I have ever acted in one of his plays. When I was at Clifton Preparatory School we did a Nativity Play and I was told I was to play a fairy, which I was quite cross about, because I knew the Nativity story did not involve fairies. I also played a snail once, and Alice in Alice in Wonderland .