With nearly 50 years experience as an actress, Dame Judi Dench
has given an astonishing range of performances. As well as her Oscars
and knighthood, she was the first person to win two Olivier awards
and her marriage to Michael Williams was one of the most successful
in showbusiness. Moreover she has brought grace, warmth and frequently
a fascinating coldness to an extraordinary mixture of roles.
Class and finesse
Along with actors like Alison Steadman and John Thaw, Dench belongs
to a small group of performers who have lent class and finesse to
a dazzling range of material, from situation comedy to big screen
blockbusters.
The first hints of her talent came in the 1966 serial Talking
to a Stranger. This suffocating psychodrama was a feast of brilliant
acting, and a success Dench built on with a performance as a sexy
Titania in Peter Hall's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Masterful Macbeth
But it was as Lady Macbeth that Dench created the most brilliant
feat of her acting career. Dame Edith Evans famously refused to
play the role owing to her belief that the part was incomplete,
that the character's psychological collapse happened offstage and
allowed the actor little opportunity to convey such a huge plot
development. But in 1978 Dench pulled it off with one of the most
hair-raising scenes in TV history, somehow encapsulating that vague
theatrical concept of "going mad" with her now legendary
satanic scream.
Comedy and drama
She switched to lighter fare with the delightfully assured sitcom
A Fine Romance, which gave her the chance to showcase her warmth
and impeccable comic timing. She managed to use her maternal qualities
to even greater effect in the magnificent On Giant's Shoulders,
an astounding BBC play which chronicled the story of a couple's
attempts to adopt a Thalidomide child.
If Dench's work has moved into more crowd-pleasing areas, from
Bond movies to nostalgic period dramas, she still allows herself
plenty of opportunity to give us those Lady Macbeth moments. She
remains compelling in movies like Iris and stage roles like Sondheim's
A Little Night Music, in which her intimate performance of Send
in the Clowns was an expressive tour de force.
Simon Farquhar
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