The lost 1981 role that came back to haunt Judi Dench 40 years later: “It was touch and go”
Plenty of actors have experienced a full-circle moment in their careers, but that isn’t always a good thing. Take Judi Dench, for instance, who had a role ripped out of her hands in the early 1980s, only to have it come back and bite her in the arse almost four decades later.
She still took it in her stride, though, since the legend of stage and screen isn’t one for regrets. Ironically, if things hadn’t taken a wrong turn the first time around, there’s a chance she wouldn’t have been tempted to take a second bite of the cherry, which turned out to be a disaster for everyone involved.
Even though she’s an Academy Award winner with a further seven nominations to her name, Dench didn’t play a leading role in a movie until 1997, when she headlined Mrs Brown. Obviously, it led to much bigger and better things, with the obvious downside being that she owes her big-screen success to Harvey Weinstein.
Her reputation as one of her generation’s finest thespians had been secured long before that, though, with Dench tearing it up on the stage and the small screen since the early 1960s. She knows Shakespeare like the back of her hand, but she proved herself to be a dab hand in musicals, too, with a 1968 run of Cabaret the turning point.
Fast forward a dozen years, and she’d been lined up for a plum gig in what would eventually become one of the most iconic and successful musicals of all time. When Andrew Lloyd Webber was gearing up to debut Cats in 1981, he’d hired Dench to pull double duty as Gumbie Cat and Grizabella, only for disaster to strike with less than two weeks to go before the first show.
During rehearsals, the actor took a fall and was rushed to the hospital, where it was revealed that she’d suffered a snapped Achilles tendon. “It was touch and go whether she could return,” Lloyd Webber recalled. “If she was allowed to, it could only be as Grizabella; dance was out of the question.”
Obviously, she didn’t return, with Elaine Paige stepping in as Grizabella and Myra Sands as Jennyanydots, the two roles earmarked for Dench. It was a blow, so when the opportunity arose for the veteran to atone for the one that got away and star in the feature-length adaptation of Cats, it was an opportunity that she couldn’t refuse.
She might have been better off saying no, since Tom Hooper’s risible film was fucking horrendous, bombing at the box office, becoming a laughing stock, giving rise to rumours of the mythical ‘Butthole Cut’ where you could see everybody’s sphincters, and putting Dench through the ignominy of notching her first-ever Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Supporting Actress’.
That said, she seemed pretty thrilled at adding the Razzies to her endless collection of awards season recognition, but after being robbed of the chance to be an original Cats cast member, all she had to show for her eventual involvement was a ‘Worst Picture’ winner and one of the worst movies she’s ever been in.
