The chameleon­ic tal­ents of Judi Dench

Judi Dench’s strength as an actor lies in the believ­abil­i­ty of the char­ac­ters she por­trays. She plays a part with such con­vic­tion that, whether the char­ac­ter is inher­ent­ly like­able or not, you care about her and want to know her fate. In small­er roles where Dench’s screen time is more lim­it­ed, her char­ac­ters car­ry the over­all nar­ra­tive for­ward, even if she’s mere­ly men­tioned in pass­ing, mak­ing her always memorable.

Our first look at Dench’s char­ac­ter – romance author Miss Eleanor Lav­ish – in James Ivory’s 1985 peri­od dra­ma A Room with a View is around the din­ner table at a guest house in Flo­rence. She has com­mand of the con­ver­sa­tion, dis­cussing the top­ic of trav­el among a group of fel­low lodgers and tourists. She comes off as a bit of a brazen swash­buck­ler, who’s trav­elled many places solo (an anom­aly for women at that time) seek­ing inspi­ra­tion for her next novel.

Dench is the embod­i­ment of free spirit­ed­ness in this role. Obser­va­tion­al and fas­tid­i­ous to the high­est degree, Lav­ish is a char­ac­ter that tru­ly savors life, from stop­ping to exult old stat­ues, or sit­ting in a field to drink in the scenery. She takes much delight in find­ing romance in the small­est of details. This makes for some com­i­cal moments, such as when she enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly inhales the city air and encour­ages her walk­ing com­pan­ion Char­lotte Bartlett (played by Dench’s dear off­screen friend Dame Mag­gie Smith) to do the same who, in turn, does so and sti­fles a retch.

It’s easy to trace Dench’s path to the icon sta­tus she holds today. She had a long and sto­ried career in the the­atre in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, per­form­ing a host of roles includ­ing (a lot of) Shake­speare and Sal­ly Bowles in Cabaret. She had her first bit parts in films The Third Secret in 1964 and Four in the Morn­ing in 1965, and made many TV show appear­ances before star­ring along­side her hus­band Michael Williams in the sit­com A Fine Romance, which ran from 1981 to 1984.

In Charles Sturridge’s 1988 film A Hand­ful of Dust, Dench plays a moth­er to a home wreck­ing son. Like A Room with a View, A Hand­ful of Dust is also based on a nov­el, but this time set in the ear­ly 1930s. As Mrs. Beaver, Dench is a styl­ish social climb­ing busi­ness­woman. A bit of a busy­body, Mrs. Beaver likes to orga­nize things, from arrang­ing for a flat rental to erect­ing a memo­r­i­al for peo­ple she’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly close with, though she claims to be. She lives well enough, but she does have to work, and it’s evi­dent that she’d love to change her situation.

Mrs. Beaver appears gen­er­ous and cheer­ful and dotes on her son, almost to a creepy degree. But she’s also cun­ning, ruth­less­ly shrewd, and prac­ti­cal. From the out­set, she has her sights set on her son mar­ry­ing a soon-to-be divor­cée he’s been hav­ing an affair with, hop­ing that with some prod­ding she’ll coax her to demand a sub­stan­tial alimo­ny of £2000 a year instead of the more mod­est £500 her hus­band has offered. As soon as it’s clear this would-be daugh­ter-in-law will not be flush in her set­tle­ment, Mrs. Beaver and her son lose inter­est and take off for America.

While Dench’s per­for­mances are always fun to watch, it’s her flu­id adapt­abil­i­ty that draws audi­ences to her films; and with every sort of char­ac­ter under her belt, Dench can­not be type­cast. She deliv­ers per­fect­ly imper­fect human qual­i­ties to her per­for­mances which make them believ­able, and can be as con­de­scend­ing and manip­u­la­tive as she can be nur­tur­ing and fearless.

A com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent role saw Dench in David Jones’ 1987 fea­ture 84 Char­ing Cross Road as the Irish Nora Doel, wife to Antho­ny Hop­kins’ Frank Doel. Based on writer Helene Hanff’s epis­to­lary mem­oir, this film tells the sto­ry of Hanff’s near­ly 20-year cor­re­spon­dence with head buy­er Frank for Marks & Co, an anti­quar­i­an book­shop in Lon­don, from 1949 to 1968. Nora is Frank’s sec­ond wife, after his first passed dur­ing the war.

Through­out the film, we get lit­tle glimpses into their mar­riage, watch­ing Nora’s meals grow more ornate the more prac­ticed she becomes, see­ing the pair impul­sive­ly join a con­ga line on a date, and look­ing on as they dec­o­rate for Christ­mas or repaint the liv­ing room. While she’s not quick to smile, when she does you can tell it’s not for show. She takes great pride in her fam­i­ly, who are her world.

At the end of the film, Nora writes to Helene (Anne Ban­croft) about the death of Frank, and her loss is pal­pa­ble. In a grey sweater with her hair pulled back, crest­fall­en and worn out from grief, she writes ​“I miss him so, life was so inter­est­ing, he always explain­ing, and try­ing to teach me some­thing of books.”

Dench’s film career real­ly blos­somed in the mid-nineties, with cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic roles such as the laser-focused and exact­ing MI6 head M, start­ing with 1995’s Gold­en­Eye, whom she would play in eight Bond films until her depar­ture in 2012’s Sky­fall, with a cameo in 2015’s Spec­tre. She won the Best Sup­port­ing Actress Oscar for play­ing Queen Eliz­a­beth I in 1998’s Shake­speare in Love and sud­den­ly she was every­where, with some of her most mem­o­rable char­ac­ters yet to come.