The “off-putting” director who made an enemy of Judi Dench: “I can be really difficult”
She may be a Dame, but that didn’t stop the great Judi Dench from entering into something of a bitter feud with one of her James Bond movie directors.
Dench is one of the most celebrated actors in cinematic history and has earned nearly every accolade she possibly could have. Her brief role as the Queen of England in Shakespeare in Love may have earned her the Oscar, but Dench’s amazing track record includes such contemporary classics as Notes on a Scandal, A Room With A View, Philomena, Chocolat, and Pride & Prejudice, among many others.
Although Dench has been drawing praise ever since she made her debut at England’s Old Vic theatre in the 1950s, she is probably best known to younger viewers as M, the head of MI6 in the James Bond movies. Dench appeared as the first female version of the character back in 1995 for Goldeneye, and reprised her role for every subsequent Bond film for over two more decades.
M was more of an expositional device than a character in the older Bond films that starred Sean Connery and Roger Moore, but Dench transformed the part and made it her own. Her first scene in Goldeneye saw her dressing down Pierce Brosnan’s 007 by calling him “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and “a relic of the Cold War”, and she continued that defiant streak throughout Daniel Craig’s run.
A supporting role in a blockbuster franchise might not be what every award-winning performer dreamed of for the later stage of their career, but Dench was continuously cited as one of the best parts of the franchise. She managed to earn praise for her performance in films like Die Another Day and Quantum of Solace, which were otherwise torn apart by critics; she even earned several major award nominations for her emotional sendoff to the character in Skyfall.
Despite the brilliance of her work, Dench admitted to the Express that her experience filming the franchise wasn’t always the most pleasant. She singled out director Roger Spottiswoode, who helmed 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, as a particularly aggravating collaborator because of his unprofessional tactics of sending her re-written scripts late at night and asking her to re-record (or “loop”) her dialogue.
“It was very off-putting indeed to have to learn the script and then, at a quarter to 10 the night before filming, to get a loud knocking on the door by the courier with a new script,” she said. “That’s not fair.”
Spottiswoode may have tried to make amends by offering to drive Dench home after recording sessions, but she refused, and even remarked to him, “I can be really difficult when I want to be”. While she spoke highly of her other collaborators on the Bond series, Dench refused to even shake Spottiswoode’s hand.
Professional courtesy should be expected on any set, but there should be an added level of respect for someone with as much experience as Dench. Given that she has worked with such acclaimed filmmakers as Charles Crichton, Tony Richardson, Clint Eastwood, James Ivory, and Stephen Frears, there’s nothing on Spottiswoode’s résume that was all that impressive; prior to Tomorrow Never Dies, his credits included the forgettable Tom Hanks comedy Turner & Hooch, the derivative slasher film Terror Train, and the infamously disastrous Sylvester Stallone vehicle Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
What’s most ironic about the ordeal is that Tomorrow Never Dies was the lowest-grossing of all of Dench’s films in the series, and is rarely held up as a memorable entry in the franchise. When it comes to Bond history, Dench certainly left a greater impression than Spottiswoode.
