The one movie Judi Dench hates being reminded of: “I’ve never watched it”
Every actor, especially those with long and illustrious careers, is bound to make a misstep or two, and there’s one movie that Judi Dench would prefer you didn’t mention in her esteemed presence.
The strange thing is that, by all accounts, she had a nice enough time making it, but she was well aware of how it was greeted by critics and audiences. Then again, Dench admitted that the only reason she agreed to star in the film was that she was basically love-bombed by its leading man, so she wasn’t exactly won over by the strength of the material.
Since the early 1960s, Dench has been building and enhancing her reputation as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest-ever actors, if not one of the very best ever, regardless of nationality. The older a living legend gets, the more forgivable it is when they take it easy and turn up for the paycheque, and it’s no coincidence those gigs became more frequent the older she got.
In the last decade, the Academy Award winner has appeared in Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Tom Hooper’s Cats, and Kenneth Branagh’s Artemis Fowl, three performances that hardly required her to flex those Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque dramatic muscles. The latter two were especially shite, even if Dench was oddly proud of scoring her first-ever Razzie nomination.
In all honesty, she’s Judi fucking Dench, so she can do whatever the hell she wants, and she’s earned the right to do so. However, one notable misfire became such a dark cloud hovering over her legacy that when it was brought up in conversation, the star suggested that it was better off being glossed over.
During an event in support of the Films Without Borders charity, the decorated veteran of stage and screen was quizzed on the “one or two peculiar choices” that she’d made over the years. Without missing a beat, and in typical Dench fashion, she refused to beat around the bush. “Flops, you mean?” she replied.
There have been a few of those, for sure, but one in particular stood out as the elephant that she’d rather not bring into the room. “You’re not going to mention The Chronicles of Riddick, are you?” she asked, suddenly paralysed with fear that she’d have to take a trip down memory lane and revisit her work in Vin Diesel and David Twohy’s crushingly dull Pitch Black sequel.
“I’ve never watched it,” Dench clarified. “And I don’t think many other people have.” It flopped at the box office, so she’s right on the second count, with Diesel’s powers of persuasion entirely responsible. Recalling that he showed up to entice her into the movie with a bouquet of flowers “so long they couldn’t get it up the stairs,” the charm offensive worked wonders.
“Well, you can’t say no to a man like that,” she added, although she probably should have done, seeing as she now shivers at the mere mention of The Chronicles of Riddick.
