The only actor who left Judi Dench starstruck: “I was completely bowled over”
A stalwart star of many iconic movies since the 1960s, Dame Judi Dench is a British icon and a cinematic heavyweight who has proved to be one of the country’s finest exports with her repeatedly brilliant performances. Starting out in the theatre, the actor proved her versatility with a range of Shakespearean characters, and she has continued to perform on the stage for decades. By the 1990s, however, her on-screen appearances became more frequent, with the actor making her James Bond debut as M in 1995’s GoldenEye.
Her tenure as M lasted until 2012’s Skyfall, and her character was a hit with fans. Meanwhile, she also appeared in period dramas like Shakespeare in Love, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre, as well as starring in acclaimed films like J. Edgar, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Belfast. Dench’s credits are pretty impressive, apart from a few duds, of course – who could forget Cats? But every actor makes mistakes, and Dench’s performance in the critically panned and universally hated film can certainly be ignored in favour of her much more illustrious list of theatre and movie credits.
She is acting royalty, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still get starstruck herself. Dench might have worked with some pretty famous stars in her time, from Helen Mirren and Clint Eastwood to Leonardo DiCaprio and Maggie Smith, but she’s not exempt from feeling a little nervous flutter in her stomach when certain actors greet her. For Dench, it was a Hollywood icon, often considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, that made her feel “like a teenager.”
Talking to Stylist, she revealed, “I had to go to the Oscars a while ago, and Jack Nicholson walked past me. I couldn’t believe it.” Dench continued, “You know how, in your mind, these famous actors are always huge – they’re vast – well, he wasn’t actually that tall. But I was still completely bowled over.”
Nicholson has appeared in countless classics, from Easy Rider and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to The Shining and Chinatown, defining the New Hollywood era with his performances as complex and often morally ambiguous characters. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of rapid cinematic transformation, with more nihilism, violence, and intense character studies coming to take over the mainstream, earning significant critical and commercial success as a result.
Alongside the likes of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Robert Duvall, Nicholson helped change the cinema landscape with his performances, and Dench is certainly a big fan of the star. “I got a bit silly; like a teenager. I had just presented an award and he walked past and said, ‘Good job, Jude.’ I pretended to be all suave and worldly but actually I was like a jelly inside.”
It’s always refreshing to hear a star reveal that they’re not as dissimilar to us than we might think – they are also prone to getting nervous around other celebrities, no matter how famous they are themselves.
