The only actor who intimidated Judi Dench: “A bit terrifying, but brilliant”
She’s barely over five feet tall, but Judi Dench isn’t one to be easily intimidated, overawed, or daunted by the company she keeps. While that’s a personality trait most legends develop eventually, it’s been true of the stage and screen icon since the beginning of her career.
Dropped in at the deep end from the start, Dench was tasked to hold her own against some of the finest Shakespearean actors to ever tread the boards when she became a fixture of London’s West End in her early 20s, and at no point did she ever look out of her depth.
Graduating from stage to screen in the early 1960s, it was clear that Dench had the potential to be remembered as not only one of her generation’s most gifted talents but one of Britain’s all-time great actors. That’s exactly what she did, with her back catalogue of performances and overflowing trophy cabinet more than enough proof to underline her credentials as one of the very best.
Even legends have heroes, though, and Dench found herself so staggered that one of her own reached out that she didn’t believe it at first. “He rang me up, and I thought at first it was a friend sending me up,” she admitted to The Guardian about picking up the phone and hearing Clint Eastwood on the other end. “So, I didn’t take it seriously to start with.”
After realising that it was, in fact, Eastwood on the other end of the line gauging her interest in boarding biographical drama J Edgar, Dench needed a moment to compose herself. “I realised it was really him, and that was a tricky conversation,” she said. “I hadn’t met him by the time I got on set, really. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and there was this immensely tall man standing there. A bit terrifying, but brilliant.”
The fact Eastwood is over a foot taller wasn’t the main reason why Dench was “completely daunted” by the indelible icon: it was that she’d been waiting her entire professional life for the chance. It was a bucket list moment for the James Bond veteran, even if she wasn’t overly enthused about the actor and filmmaker’s signature style of shooting.
Having spent decades dreaming of a potential collaboration with Eastwood, somebody with Dench’s vast experience and knowledge should have known that he would only give her one or two takes to nail any given scene. Instead, it took her by surprise, and it was a process that took a little getting used to.
Still, it was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity she’d been waiting for, even if she thought somebody was pulling her leg when the grizzled face of the revisionist western first reached out with an offer to play Annie Hoover.
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