The ‘Bond girl’ who was terrified of Judi Dench: “I was so scared that I was going to screw up”
Even though she spent most of her James Bond tenure restricted to an office and spouting reams of plot-furthering exposition, the mere prospect of Judi Dench was enough to strike fear into a franchise newcomer.
Dench’s M didn’t interact with too many ‘Bond girls’ across her eight-film stint, and when she did, their exchanges weren’t particularly lengthy. However, going toe-to-toe with the diminutive dame was enough to cause sleepless nights for an actor who didn’t manage to find many positives in their overall experience.
The history of female characters within the Bond saga has been sketchy, to put it lightly, with the first three decades of 007’s big-screen adventures deliberately restricting them to four archetypes, and it often became an albatross that the performers would wear around their necks for the rest of their careers.
It’s a lie to suggest that every pre-Daniel Craig ‘Bond girl’ regretted being part of the long-running film series, and Gemma Arterton did, nonetheless, but enough of them have confessed to the negative impact it had on their short and long-term futures that the so-called ‘curse’ isn’t exactly a far-fetched theory.
As a nuclear physicist with a preference for short shorts and a ridiculous name, Denise Richards’ Christmas Jones faced an uphill battle from the beginning. She was thrilled to land the part at first, but by the time the dust had settled on The World Is Not Enough, she felt like she’d been hung out to dry by her director, Michael Apted.
Richards had grown up watching Bond flicks with her mother, so she had an affinity with the secret agent’s death-defying escapades, which naturally meant she was teeming with excitement before her first day on set. Unfortunately, that first day coincided with a face-to-face encounter with Dench, which quickly saw her enthusiasm replaced by panic.
“My first day of filming, I had two lines and I was afraid to say them because I had Judi Dench there,” she confessed to The New York Post. Never mind Pierce Brosnan’s Bond, or any of the action-packed scenes she was gearing up to shoot, a brief moment with one of the most decorated actors of their generation left her overcome with anxiety.
“I was up all night, could not sleep, because it was with Judi Dench,” Richards explained. “And I was terrified. She couldn’t have been nicer, but I was so scared that I was going to screw up my line that I had to say that it was my first day of shooting! I didn’t want to mess up.”
She might only be a shade over five feet tall, but Dench is a force to be reckoned with. Richards had no problems boarding one of pop culture’s most iconic properties, had no qualms being put through the wringer with explosions and gunfire going off all around her, and even did her best with some woeful dialogue, but trying to recite a couple of lines in front of an Academy Award-winning icon was almost too much for her to handle. On the plus side, she got it out of the way first.
