The one director Judi Dench hated working with: “I didn’t feel that he wanted me”
As a stalwart member of both The Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre Company for many years, Judi Dench established herself as one of Britain’s premium talents. While she predominantly performed tirelessly on the stage, the actor occasionally lent herself to film productions, where she unsurprisingly garnered considerable praise.
Despite the allure of the film industry, Dench kept her involvement in movies minimal for many decades, instead focusing her time on productions of classic plays. Even though she won a Bafta for her performance in the film Four in the Morning in 1965, that wasn’t enough to lure her away from the likes of William Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw.
The actor’s film career didn’t take off until the 1990s, but before then, she landed another Bafta-winning movie role in 1985’s A Room With A View, directed by James Ivory. The period drama, based on E M Forster’s novel of the same name, saw Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands in the leading roles, while Dench played a novelist named Eleanor Lavish.
She also starred alongside Maggie Smith, who would become one of her closest friends and a frequent collaborator, appearing with her in other movies like Ladies in Lavender and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. While Dench undoubtedly made some great memories on the set of A Room With A View, she wasn’t so fond of working with Ivory, who she found difficult.
Talking to Brian McFarlane, a film historian, the actor revealed her issues with Ivory. She said, “I didn’t feel that I was on his wavelength, and I didn’t feel that he wanted me in the film.”
She was offended when he cut one of her greatest scenes from the movie, she explained, referring to a sequence in which her character “goes mad and attacks the man selling postcards”. After reportedly telling Dench he liked her performance in the scene, it was nowhere to be seen in the final cut, much to Dench’s disappointment.
“He told me that Helena Bonham Carter hadn’t been feeling up to it that day,” she continued, although she has no idea why Ivory couldn’t have left the scene in the movie. Still, the movie won Dench ‘Best Actress in a Supporting Role’ at the Baftas, helping to establish her further in the world of cinema.
Ivory, known for working with his partner Ismail Merchant, began making films in the 1950s, although he is perhaps best known for making period dramas like Maurice, The Remains of the Day, Howards End, and writing the screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. A Room With A View was a popular release of Ivory’s, earning him an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Director’, and it seems as though Dench is one of the few actors to actually have a problem with Ivory as a filmmaker.
Samuel West, who appeared in Howards End, once revealed that working with Ivory was “one of the happiest experiences of my professional life.” Thus, while others might have liked working with Ivory, Dench’s experience was much more negative, even if he tried to apologise for cutting the scene. “To make amends, I sent her a beautiful little drawing that an artist in Florence had made of her, but she never acknowledged it,” Ivory told critic Robert Emmet Long.
