Judi Dench

Judi Dench0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is an actress. For the past forty years she's delighted British audiences with her performances in theatre, television and film.

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In recent years she's attracted a worldwide following, culminating in her nomination for an Oscar in Mrs. Brown, for which she'd already won a Golden Globe Award. But prizes and nominations, and there are plenty of others one could mention, don't quite capture the essence of an actress who came out of drama school and onto the stage of the Old Vic in 1957, and who to day, at the age of sixty three, seems to many of us as fresh, vivacious, and utterly versatile as she must have been then. She is Dame Judy Dench. You do defy typecasting. Judy Shakespeare to James Bond films, Sally Bowles to Queen Victoria. Is is that what you like? I mean, there's a danger in it, isn't there?

Presenter1:22

It is what I like. I don't like to be pigeon-holed. I've never liked that. And it is true that after you've played one character, you sometimes get a follow-up of scripts rather like that character to play. And when what you're dying to do is to break out of that mould and be another person and stretch yourself. But there are all sorts of stories of your taking on roles that at first glance wouldn't be suitable. I mean, I think you dismissed yourself as a when you were asked to do Cleopatra, didn't you? You don't want me, I'm a menopausal dwarf. I am quoting you correctly. Yes, that's you are absolutely. But I mean yes, you say at first glance, but I mean I rarely read the play. It's just something that captures my imagination about a part, really. But there's also a bit of the devil in you, isn't there? Because I think w if people say you shouldn't do something.

Judi Dench1:39

Uh

Speaker 21:54

Because

Speaker 21:56

But you know when you

Judi Dench1:57

Uh

Presenter2:09

Um then you want to do it at the moment. Well, having committed myself to something like Lady Brackner or Cleopatra, then I had a whole host of people openly laughing in my face. I mean people saying, Well, you're not uh really are you? You have to admit you're not the right b casting or build or anything for Cleopatra, and then there's something really in me sees kind of purple and I think whatever happens, I'm going to do that. And then of course there's been Queen Victoria, Mrs. Brown, to whom you you brought, you know, such such femininity really. I think that was what was the most impressive thing about it. But but she she didn't in the end win the Oscar for you. How disappointed were you?

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Well, I wasn't disappointed at all,'cause I didn't expect to win it.

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I'm absolutely, completely honest about this. I did not expect to win. I thought it was wonderful being nominated. I'm rather sad that somebody had to win, because the state of nomination is so wonderful. But I am terribly glad that we went, because we had the most incredible

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Two days, really, when our feet didn't hit the ground, you know. David Hare, the author of your your current play, said that it would would do you good to go it didn't matter whether you won it or not, he said, but it would do you good to get out, I quote, of the rabbit hutch and sniff the rough heady air, if rather polluted, of the movie capital. The hair hutch, should we?

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But is that what it felt like? Did you feel you'd escaped to this kind of glitzy place or? No, I felt I was in a in a kind of bubble, in a dream. Because, I mean, Mrs Brown, of course, was made for television. So, I mean

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The fact that we went to Cannes, that we went to I went over to promote it in N New York and Los Angeles last July. It's so dreamlike that it's

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That it's uh you know, it it's it's the it is the stuff of fairy tales. And the Oscars, nobody can ever explain to you what it was like. They can't when they say the red carpet you thought, Oh, this is the red carpet. Well, when you suddenly enter the red carpet and you get these banks of people both sides, and they scream your name, and then reporters I must have done I don't know how many interviews. Just wonderful. A good experience. Terrific.

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And good parties which we shall hear about. But tell me about your first record.

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Uh my first record is going to be The Lark Ascending, Vaughan Williams, perhaps because of its essential Englishness and if I'm going to go to this desert island.

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And I can't imagine it's going to be off the west coast of Scotland, which I'd like very much. That it's going to be far away, and I'll need this.

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IONA BROWN, playing part of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. You did a a lot of research, Judy, into Queen Victoria f for the film. You read her Highland Diaries and Account of the Time and so on.

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How this is the million dollar question really, how close do you think she and John Brown really were?

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Whether or not they had an affair was not really what we set out to say in the film.

Judi Dench5:53

Yeah.

Judi Dench5:55

Well

Presenter5:56

For instance, you know, she used to write up about um every good looking young man in court before she met Albert.

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and she was frightfully passionate.

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didn't like having children very much, but she was frightfully passionate, and she had a violent temper.

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So she was all those things.

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Well, I can't think that, um

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That was all kind of totally put to bed when Albert died. So I'm sure that their relationship was

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I'm sure it was passionate, and how passionate it was I suppose we shall never know. But I'm sure there was passion attached to it. She went on putting flowers, I think, on his pillow'cause the film ends, of course, when he died. She died. F from the day he died to the day she died, she had fresh flowers put on his pillow.

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and when she died she asked that a photograph of him were pla was placed in her hand.

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And I think the doctor at the time said, for goodness sake, put some flowers on top of that. So nobody would see it.

Judi Dench6:49

Mm-hmm.

Presenter6:51

But you don't normally uh do such a lot of research into a po I mean, you said you don't even read a script, you know. Why not? Is it because um and I'm offering you an excuse here that you want to experience the whole thing with the cast, you know, at the first read-through. Pushing myself to the edge of fright, really. I need it, yes. I need to go right to the edge of the precipice before I fall off. And I have on occasion read red things. I had to read up about Queen Victoria because she everybody knows about her, but um

Speaker 27:06

Edit what's up to yourself.

Judi Dench7:07

Before you

Judi Dench7:10

I need

Presenter7:23

With another part, I just like to

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It is a sense of fright. I mean, I remember, um, Howard Davis came and told me the story of Mother Courage at home and I gave him supper. What he omitted to tell me was that she was on all the time. She never came off. I was so angry with him on the first day of rehearsal. But he'd left a script with you, presumably. Yes, but I didn't read it at the time.

Judi Dench7:41

Yeah.

Presenter7:45

You I mean, obviously you know I'm sure you could quote whole tracts of Shakespeare, if not whole plays, couldn't you? I could. I could do you Twelfth Night and Midseven Night's Dreamy and Measure for Measure. I could do them now here, yes, for you.

Judi Dench7:49

I create a

Judi Dench7:53

Everybody

Presenter7:56

But you couldn't learn David Hare's lines of Amy's View. Why couldn't? He'll be so angry when he hears this.

Presenter8:04

No, I just found it very, very difficult to learn, and I wasn't comforted by the fact that Michael Gambon found Skylight so difficult either. And in fact, three weeks after we started I asked Richard to release me.

Presenter8:14

Because I was learning it and coming the next day and not knowing it. But why do you think that is? What is it about? Well, there is a strange music to David's lines.

Judi Dench8:18

Well there is a straight

Presenter8:22

Um and once you do know them.

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Uh y the rhythm is so apparent, but before you do that, before you get that rhythm off.

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M

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They look when you see the play it sounds very colloquial, but in actual fact, you know, if you if you do leave out a word or or

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here and there, you know, it does make a huge difference. It throws you terribly. You know, I've always learnt by a kind of osmosis. But I used to just have to go home then and get into a hot bath and say I'm not getting out of this bath until I know the next three or four pages. And I had to learn in a way I've never had to learn. And the bath went cold. The bath went cold so stuff.

Judi Dench8:58

In the bathroom.

Presenter9:01

Record number two. Tell me about that.

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Um this is the Purcell music for the funeral of Queen Mary. I remember the first time I heard it, uh it it started a long way off. I think I heard a live um recording of it and it started a long way off and and and came nearer. It was v visually, terribly exciting. I've never forgotten it.

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The opening march from Purcell's funeral music for Queen Mary, with the Philip Jones Brasse Ensemble and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Philip Ledger.

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Your acting, then, Judy, by the sound of it, is instinctive. Um obviously it's now enriched by years of experience. But could you always act? I mean, as a child, could you just do it?

Presenter10:44

I don't know. We used to always be acting or dressing up. What sort of things? When I was five I played a snail in four and twenties.

Presenter10:53

Say is it Sailors or Tailors went to kill a Snail? I can't remember once. Um and I just remember and I can always crouching down as a snail and on the performance standing up. And I can remember as if it was yesterday, this um m headmistress of mine standing in the wing saying,

Presenter11:11

Yeah.

Presenter11:13

I can s I can hear it now. And you live New York. I thought your family got involved in the mystery place. Yes, we did. We did. Th they both were very enthusiastic about the theatre, and we were taken to the theatre as children.

Judi Dench11:15

Then

Presenter11:26

So your ambition always was to do something to do with the theatre, wasn't it? Yes, to be a be a designer.

Judi Dench11:29

Yes, we put this way.

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And that's what I half trained to be.

Presenter11:36

When did you change then? When did you suddenly realize you actually wanted to be on the stage?

Judi Dench11:38

I don't want to

Presenter11:41

Well, my brother Geoffrey only ever wanted to be an actor, and it was his enthusiasm that that I caught. And then I saw a production of King Lear at Stratford in the fifties, with Michael Rydgrave and Mary Scoring, and and I saw the set for that.

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And it completely transformed my ideas about designing. I thought that's the kind of designer I would love to be, but that's not the imagination that I have. So you decided then you couldn't do that? So I decided I'm going to be really, really run of the mill if I was a designer. May not get any work. So you turned to acting kind of by default? I did in a way. I thought I'd just try and see if I can get into Central where Jeff had been.

Presenter12:21

And I did, and I went in a rather half hearted way. Hm. So was there a moment when you became wholehearted? There was, yes. What what happened? At um at the end of our first term we had to do a mime, and we'd been warned about it for something like ten weeks before.

Presenter12:35

And I blithely turned up for this class, and they said this is the morning we do our mind crank I thought, This is this is the morning I hadn't remembered, you know, so I did it completely instinctively off the spur of the moment, completely. Do you remember what? Yes, I do remember very clearly indeed, walking into a garden.

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and um just picking up something and smelling it.

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and standing and looking at things, you know, and probably thinking, What the hell am I going to do next? and then sitting on a swing.

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Just very gently.

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I can remember. And then I got the most incredibly wonderful notice for it from Walter Hurd.

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And that changed my mind, and it also made me work harder. But then at some point, somebody apparently said, Your face was all wrong. Yes, that's right.

Judi Dench13:19

BS

Presenter13:20

When I'm in that for a film.

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Very early on.

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So everything looks wrong with your face, he said.

Judi Dench13:23

Turn every single thing on with your face.

Presenter13:26

Every single thing wrong with your face. Wrong with your face, yes.

Judi Dench13:27

Yeah.

Presenter13:29

Well, I didn't mind. I was at the OVIC at the time. I thought, oh, well.

Speaker 213:32

That's a good idea.

Presenter13:33

No, I didn't mind, except that of course of course I've remembered it, haven't I?

Speaker 213:36

Hmm.

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What a giveaway.

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Um

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But it's made me unsure of myself in in films which I am, but it also has made me much stronger in my belief that you can

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get away with so much in the theatre. I mean, so many people have always said to me when they've met me or come round afterwards, has says, Gosh, y you're no height at all but I know that I can give the illusion of being much taller and I can be the tall willowy blonde on the stage, whereas I can't be that on the stage. But as we said, you did Cleopatra, Sena Moore, really, and you're five foot one.

Speaker 214:04

Mm-hmm.

Judi Dench14:04

Yeah.

Judi Dench14:05

But let me see.

Judi Dench14:08

Yeah.

Presenter14:10

1 and 3 quarters.

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Record number three.

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Oh.

Presenter14:16

I have to take Sir John with me on my desert island, and I know you won't let me take him as a person, so then I'll have Sir John and Dame Peg um doing a bit of much ado.

Speaker 414:26

Lady Beatrice.

Speaker 414:28

Have you wept all this while?

Judi Dench14:31

Yeah.

Presenter14:32

Uh

Judi Dench14:32

Uh

Judi Dench14:33

Yeah.

Presenter14:33

and I will weep a while longer.

Speaker 414:35

I will not desire that.

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They will have no reason.

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I do it freely.

Speaker 414:40

Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wrong.

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Ah how much might the man deserve of me that would write her

Speaker 414:46

Is that any way to show such friendship?

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A very even way.

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But no such friend

Speaker 414:51

May a man do it?

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It is a man's office, but not

Speaker 414:55

George

Presenter14:55

Uh

Speaker 414:55

I do love nothing in the world so well as you.

Speaker 415:01

is not that strange.

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As strange as the thing I know not.

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It was possible for me to say, I love nothing so well as you.

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But believe me not

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And yet I lie not, I I confess nothing or I deny nothing.

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Yeah.

Speaker 415:18

I'm Uh

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I'm not sure.

Speaker 415:20

By my sword, Beatrice, thou lov'st me

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Uh

Speaker 415:22

Do not swear and eat it.

Presenter15:24

John Gilgood and Peggy Ashcroft as they were then as Beatrice and Benedict in the church scene from Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing.

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Sir John and and Peggy Ashcroft, of course, played a an important part in your early career, didn't they? Because they

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They they helped you when you were crying in the cherry orchard. What happened to you?

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Um, I had quite a hard time with Michel Saint Denis.

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And, um, Dame Pegg said to me, Oh

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You mustn't ever let him see you cry.

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So I used to kind of go out and m march round the avon because we did a hurst in Stratford.

Judi Dench15:54

'Cause we did host in Stratford.

Presenter15:56

Well, he used to he used to he used to go right round the company.

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saying things and then he'd get to me and he'd just shrug his shoulders and he wouldn't say anything and I just didn't know how to deal with it really. But and then sir one day I came off and and after Act One, which was always the one that he said I couldn't do at all and Sir John said, Well, if you've been doing that for me, I'd be delighted. And I thought that's who I'll do it for. And I've been absolutely at his feet ever since. It's quite reassuring though, actually, to hear that you had this sort of bumpy start, because you'd had a a bumpy start too, I think, at the Old Vic, hadn't you? Oh, yes, I had terrible notices as Ophelia, except from Ken Tynan.

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Oh, well, that was a help. It was a help. This wonderful I stuck to it like

Presenter16:41

'Cause it was a huge huge part to be given straight out of drama school. Well, that's exactly. You're saying exactly what they all said, you know, how dare the so-called National Theatre, which is what the Vic was then.

Judi Dench16:41

Uh

Speaker 216:42

It is.

Judi Dench16:44

Well, that's exactly.

Judi Dench16:47

Uh

Presenter16:50

Um give the part of Ophelia to a schoolgirl.

Presenter16:54

So they wanted you to fall on your nose, really? They did, and I did. But I still went on there playing all sorts of other parts.

Presenter17:01

Yes, indeed, you played Juliet, didn't you? And wasn't it in in that production that your your father assumed

Judi Dench17:03

I think

Presenter17:08

A speaking part. It it it is, yes. Yes, when I get to the scene after Tybalt's death.

Presenter17:14

And, um, my father was si such a down to earth man.

Judi Dench17:16

Uh

Speaker 217:16

Back.

Presenter17:17

And he and Mummy were there one night and when I said, Where are my father and my mother nurse? my father shouted out, Here we are in Row H, darling.

Presenter17:26

And then after the the Cherry Orchard we mentioned just now, there was Isabella in Measure for Measure for Peter Hall, and then Titania for him in Midsummer Nights. Was that the moment really do you think that your career took off? Because Peter Hall said you were a definitive Titania of your generation.

Presenter17:43

I don't know, really.

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It was a wonderful production, and I had seen it before,'cause it was a revival.

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With Mary Euro.

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Was in it before.

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And I absolutely caught my imagination'cause the fairies were slightly kind of um

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Greasy looking.

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They're all barefooted and Lilly DeNoble had done these wonderful clothes. And, um, they smelt the air. They were terribly tactile. I thought it was lovely. And then

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And then um

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I came to play it, which was glorious, and had a wonderful

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Huge wig made of yak hair, just been made in Paris.

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that one night Neris Hughes was playing the first fairy. We were doing she you spotted sea spotted snakes. She had to comb my hair with this kind of little thorn brush, and I heard at one point she said, Oh, my God she said, I've caught the brush in your hair she said So I had to play the whole of the wrestling with this great brush in my hair.

Presenter18:38

Tell me about your fourth record.

Presenter18:40

My fourth record has to be Christaberg's playing Lady in Red, because this was on our daughter's sixteenth birthday. We had a marquee put in the garden and we decorated. I decorated, we went to Covent Garden, got the flowers and decorated, and it looked so enchanting, this thing. We were trying out the sound and we got this record, and Michael and I danced, and it's just this is the essence of our family, of the three of us, and now more of us, four of us now. But it it just brings back such a wave of strong kind of feeling about the family.

Speaker 219:19

But I hardly know

Speaker 219:23

Uh

Speaker 219:25

His beauty by my side

Speaker 219:33

Never forget

Speaker 219:39

The way you look tonight

Presenter19:49

Christaberg and the Lady in Red.

Presenter19:51

Um movement is hugely important in your I suppose in in everybody's acting, but uh it strikes me in yours perhaps more than most. I don't know, seeing you walk on in your current play, Amy's view, when you're a middle aged actress, but you're positively skittish, you know, sort of

Presenter20:06

Jumping into a chair and tucking your feet underneath you. Do do you analyse that little again? Does it all happen instinctively?

Presenter20:13

That's sir actually in David's play. He said she sits with her feet tucked under her.

Presenter20:17

So I kind of and also she's um

Judi Dench20:17

So I can

Presenter20:20

She was married to an artist.

Presenter20:22

And that's the way in I found, not through being an actress. It's why I get them to make my wig down and I put it up myself,'cause I it I just feel more like the person that um that this man would have seen as a young girl,'cause he was older than her, her husband, and that she must have been somebody that he could have painted and drawn a lot. I imagine he drew her a lot in that red chalk, you know, a lot.

Speaker 220:43

Hmm.

Presenter20:44

And that's the kind of way into the person I found. But what you can do, it seems almost, is flick a switch and be in character. I know that Billy Connolly, who of course played John Brown to your Queen Victoria, has been making this point about you, that you could be having a giggle, you know, waiting for a take if the lighting was fiddling about or something. Suddenly they say action and you click into character. He said it was hugely impressive. Do you feel you can do that? Is that does that come with experience? Well, it's it's what

Judi Dench21:10

I just come with experience.

Presenter21:14

It's a kind of training thing, isn't it? I d't what you do, it's the job. It's what you do, it's the job, it is. It's the job. What it also means is that you have a kind of

Judi Dench21:17

Don't

Judi Dench21:19

The George.

Presenter21:23

Access, an easy access to your own emotions, doesn't it? It means and again Samantha Bond, who plays opposite you in Amy's view, has said, you you quite frighten her when you become angry with her, uh as as you do at one point in the play. But you're not, I don't think, anyway, are you, a volatile person by nature.

Presenter21:44

The older I get, the angrier I get about things.

Presenter21:48

But you don't regularly visit the extremes of human behaviour, is really the point. You can get into them, conjure them up. It's because of course we all have that in us. How do you know about them if they're not part of you? Because they are part of me.

Judi Dench21:56

is because of course that we

Judi Dench21:59

But how do you do that?

Judi Dench22:03

Yeah.

Presenter22:06

I do have an extreme anger. Fortunately, I don't lose lose it very often, but I have have done on occasion very few occasions, thank goodness,'cause it's not not a good place to be.

Presenter22:16

But if it's required, I know where to find it.

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And can you also descend to the depths of despair?

Presenter22:23

I think so, yes. Michael once said to me

Presenter22:26

You can't ever be.

Presenter22:28

more on the stage than you are as a person.

Presenter22:32

And I disagreed with him.

Presenter22:34

But I underst now I understand that he's in actual fact quite right, because your borderline of despair or or

Presenter22:42

joy or

Presenter22:44

anger is only what you you can experience. But that's why it's so wonderful to do plays which actually f you feel the elastic kind of pushing and you actually do find sometimes something you've n

Judi Dench22:49

Guns.

Presenter22:58

something that you actually haven't experienced yourself, that you ca you can push yourself to that. But what it means, of course, is that that that

Presenter23:08

You know, within Dame Judy Dench, whom we all believe to be a very happy, fun loving, practical joker of a person, there are there is really quite a black side. Oh, of course, but that's in all of us, isn't it?

Presenter23:22

Record number five.

Presenter23:23

At record number five is Miles Davis.

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I love this kind of sound, and it reminds me of when.

Presenter23:30

The Vic went to America for six months.

Presenter23:34

And I was kind of introduced to jazz for the first time, real proper jazz. And this reminds me of those kind of

Presenter23:40

you know, not in a place like the Albert Horn or anything, but those kind of really smoky.

Presenter23:46

Dark rooms and this terribly haunting sound, and I love it.

Presenter24:23

Miles Davis playing Blue in Green with John Coltrane, Winton, Kelly, Bill Evans, Julian Adderley, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.

Presenter24:31

So uh tell me, Judy, about these this or these glitzy parties in LA after the Oscars. Well

Presenter24:37

Within three quarters of an hour after Finchie and I arrived in Los Angeles, we had to our huge limo was

Presenter24:46

you know, which you could have ha a whole family could have lived in there, um, was waiting at the door. We were taken to the Mirror Max party at the Beverley Wiltshire Hotel. We were met by Harvey Granstein, who was the head of Miramax, and he said, Oh, no, oh, here, you know, he said, All the nominees have got to get up and do a skit.

Presenter25:02

And I think I went paper white. I'm so frightened.

Presenter25:06

Oh, frightened. I was so frightened. Why? Well, because I looked round, there was Robin Williams and Madonna and um

Presenter25:14

and Demi Moore and Helen and I had to do had to be these two

Presenter25:20

building and constru building con what are those people? Construction workers. Those construction workers on a building site in Goodwill Hunting, which I have never even seen. Which Robin Williams. Yes. So we were taken off and given two hard hats and given a page of dialogue.

Judi Dench25:23

Construction work.

Judi Dench25:30

So we were

Presenter25:34

My page was, I mean, it was full of experience. I thought you must just go for it. This is no time to be faint-hearted. And I found somehow this terrible, gravelly American accent from somewhere and went for it. Just we went for it in a big way, the two of us. And they found it very funny. And therefore, presumably Robin Williams played Queen Victoria. Yes, he did. He played Queen Victoria. But he's good at women. Oh, he's excellent, but he's even better at Billy Connolly. So he kind of played a scene. He had to read at a speech of mine, a long speech. But then he kept turning up as Billy, you know, in the middle of it, and that was one. Wonderful. But acting with Billy Connolly must have must have been a laugh. I mean, I can't believe it. Because there's a huge film to be made of all the outtakes. I gather you nearly drowned together at one point. No, we didn't nearly drown. But we were in an old Victorian boat, and it just filled and filled and filled with not dangerously, but it just uncomfortably filled with water.

Judi Dench26:17

Yeah.

Speaker 226:17

And the candy

Judi Dench26:18

Uh

Presenter26:28

And we were out on the loch for about four hours. And it just seeped up through boots and corsets and everything, so that it was the cold was right up to the waist, and we we still laughed. And you were heavily upstaged by the horses, I understand? Yes, we had a tricky time with my pony blue. Yes.

Presenter26:47

He farted all the time in every single scene. And I didn't know whether it was the weight of me on him. I had to get library steps to put me on. I mean, me getting on is okay, but me getting on with all those clothes and the corset and the boots and everything I mean, he used to just go

Speaker 226:50

I didn't know about the

Judi Dench26:50

Yeah.

Presenter27:01

Ugh, I used to get in the morning.

Presenter27:03

Poor chap. But I mean, Billy Connolly and a farting horse together must have been impossible. Well, he was terrible, Billy. He was terrible.

Speaker 227:05

I mean,

Judi Dench27:05

But

Judi Dench27:08

Well, he was terrible.

Presenter27:12

Because we both thought it was each other, too.

Presenter27:16

Record number six.

Presenter27:17

This was the Par this is Parry, I was glad when they said unto me. And this um I've got such a memory of Michael played the lead in a television called Angel Voices, where he was a choir master.

Presenter27:29

and took a lot of young boys off for a choir.

Presenter27:33

Festival somewhere.

Presenter27:35

And I have just a vision of Michael learning this because he had to conduct it and bring in everybody at the right time and things.

Presenter28:36

I was glad when they said unto me by Sir Hubert Parry, performed by the organist Andrew Lucas with the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral conducted by John Scott. Now we are a grandmother. Is there is that a role that that you're good in?

Presenter28:52

I don't know whether I'm good in it, but I love it. Absolutely love it. Yes, he's a great, great blessing to us. Sam. Sam? Yes. What, nine months old? Yes, just over nine months old. Son of your daughter and only child, Finti. That's it.

Judi Dench29:00

Yeah.

Judi Dench29:01

Please yes.

Presenter29:07

And rather like the woman you play in in Amy's View, you drive down to your house in the country every night after the theatre don't like to stay in London and indeed the daughter in Amy's View.

Presenter29:18

ha has a a she's unmarried and she becomes pregnant.

Presenter29:22

All of these things, although actually that was life imitating art, wasn't it? It was. Because your daughter announced her pregnancy after you were doing the play. That's right.

Presenter29:31

But did David Hare write that play about you, really, is the question? I don't think he did. But there are lots of things in it that are parallels, I suppose, with my life, or that I can understand easily. She, Esme, is is is very complex and and very courageous. Um she's also really a a a very vulnerable character, isn't she?

Presenter29:51

Yes, I think she is. Very. Do you think you are?

Presenter29:55

Uh, yes, I expect I've got a lot of that in me too. But you haven't yet played the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, you haven't.

Presenter30:04

No, it'll come though, it'll come. Will you will you do it? Will you do do you get into sort of Well, I expect so. I mean

Judi Dench30:06

Yeah.

Judi Dench30:08

Fantastic.

Presenter30:11

I expect so. You can't imagine stopping and acting.

Presenter30:15

Well, we don't, do we? That's not to say that it is more important to me than my family,'cause my family without doubt are the most important thing to me.

Presenter30:24

and getting back and touching bass every night.

Presenter30:26

Is for me absolutely essential. Is it? Yes. With the moment when you get out of the car outside the house.

Presenter30:34

Um this is um the non nobis domine from Ken Branner's film of Henry V.

Presenter30:44

I love working with Ken. I directed him in Much Ado with Sam Bond.

Presenter30:48

It's very incestuous, isn't it, actually?

Presenter30:51

And then I was lucky enough to be in in Henry the Fifth. And when I directed Much Ado, I met Pat Doyle.

Presenter31:00

who writes all the music for Ken, and he is so clever, Pat, and this is a terribly moving in the film.

Presenter31:30

Non nobis domine from Kenneth Branner's film adaptation of Henry the Fifth, composed by Patrick Doyle and sung by Patrick Doyle and the Stephen Hill singers, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle. I can't really see you on a desert island, Judy. You're far too gregarious, aren't you? Yes, I'd be pretty tricky, I should think.

Presenter31:50

But there's that.

Presenter31:51

Quiet side to the city.

Judi Dench31:52

Do you think she'll be like Bob?

Presenter31:54

Whatever you think. I don't know, it could be like the Shetland Islands. That would I wouldn't mind that.

Judi Dench31:58

That would

Presenter31:59

But there is that quieter side in you, isn't there, as I say, and and and you're a practising Quaker.

Presenter32:06

Do you, I mean, do you still go to meetings? I do. I haven't been for ages, but I do go. Do you ever speak? I have.

Presenter32:13

But not often? No.

Presenter32:15

So, what does it give you? Why do you go? Why do you need it? It gives me.

Presenter32:21

It gives me um

Presenter32:26

The quiet gives me the still centre.

Presenter32:29

which I didn't really have.

Presenter32:33

So so the quiet of a desert island, but not the solitude, really? Yes, that's about it.

Presenter32:39

Lost record.

Presenter32:41

Um I've always called this calm season prosperous voyage from uh Cosi.

Presenter32:46

But I think it has got another title. I think you know what it is, Sue, but I would love this. I adore the opera.

Presenter32:52

And

Presenter32:53

I had a most marvellous agent, Julian Belfridge, and we were at Central together.

Presenter32:58

And then I went to America with a Vic and he wrote to me and said, I think I need to be an agent.

Presenter33:02

Will you be my first person on the books? and I said yes. And he w he was such a wonderful friend, Julian, and he died a few years ago, and at his funeral this was playing, and I had never kn knew I knew that we had lots and lots of pieces of music in common, but I never knew that he and I had this, and it wasn't till that moment that I found out.

Speaker 233:33

One play!

Presenter34:22

Hilary Martin Pelto, Alison Hagley, and Thomas Allen singing suave silvento from Act One of Mozart's Cosi Fantute with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Now, if you could only take one of those, Judy, which one would it be?

Presenter34:37

Well, I I'm not going to spend too long on this desert island. I'll either escape or I'll just um expire one day. So maybe I'll just take Lady in Red.

Presenter34:46

And what about your book? You've got the Bible, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare. You don't need all the plays, f from what you say, but never mind, you've got them. What else? I'm going to have a book which is going to be so vast I d it's going to have some tanker is going to have to take it to the island. I want an ordnance survey map of the world.

Presenter35:03

I'm mad about maps absolutely mad about maps. Now if I had an Ordnance Survey map of the world, you know, I could always open it and I would know intimately one tiny little piece of something I would like.

Presenter35:15

Very, very much.

Presenter35:17

Hm What about your luxury?

Presenter35:19

and my luxury is that painting by Titian of The Man with the Glove.

Presenter35:24

I've always loved it.

Presenter35:26

And, um

Presenter35:27

It's that wonderful young man.

Presenter35:30

with a ruff and he's got very dark short hair and he's looking straight out of the picture. He's in something very dark clothes.

Presenter35:37

It's irresistible, and I just like him hanging around.

Presenter35:42

Dame Judy Dench, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islanders.

Judi Dench35:53

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.