“I seized it with both hands”: the role Judi Dench called a “heaven-sent part for me to play”
The successful film career that Dame Judi Dench has acquired for herself didn’t come instantaneously. While she appeared in a few movies during the 1960s, she predominantly dedicated herself to the theatre, particularly Shakespearean roles, and it’s on the stage that she learned everything she knows.
Having played classic characters from Sally Bowles to Lady Macbeth, Dench knows her way around a complex figure, and this came in handy when she made the transition to the big screen in the 1980s – this time for good. Her previous dabbling in cinema seemed like light years away; now she was racking up period dramas and, in 1995’s GoldenEye, she made her debut appearance as her most iconic character, M.
Dench would take home an Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love, and over the coming years, she’d continue to move between British and American productions, but there were still specific opportunities that this legendary actor was yet to fulfil.
Just because you’re as skilled and acclaimed within the industry as Dench doesn’t mean that every person you’ve ever wanted to work with magically appears on your doorstep with a script in hand, begging you to sign yourself up for their next project.
But this finally happened – well, not exactly like that – for the actor a few years ago, when her dream of working with Alan Bennett came true. The Leeds-born writer, whose career as a playwright began in the 1960s, has written many classic pieces of theatre, from The Madness of George III to Talking Heads and The History Boys, and Dench has always wanted to work with him.
But only as recently as 2022 did Dench get to work on a Bennett-penned project, although it wasn’t for the stage, as she might’ve always hoped… Instead, it was his 2018 play Allelujah, which he adapted with Heidi Thomas for the silver screen, that Dench was cast in – she played Mary, one of the patients at Bethlehem Hospital, which is fighting to stay open as the threat of government-sanctioned closure looms.
The movie received mixed reviews from critics, but Dench was delighted to be a part of the project, which, moreover, was directed by Richard Eyre, with whom she’d previously worked on Notes on a Scandal. “I have never done an Alan Bennett play before. I’ve been the most huge fan of his for years and years,” she told Women’s Weekly.
“So, it was like a heaven-sent part for me to play. And I seized it with both hands. And I’m very glad I did so.”
Judi Dench
After years of wanting to collaborate with Bennett, she finally succeeded, even if Allelujah wasn’t as successful as some of his other works. But when you’ve longed to work with someone for so long, and the project features a poignant message – in this case, the importance of saving the NHS – you can hardly be mad that you didn’t wind up with an Oscar nomination this time around.
Dench has already earned enough acclaim in her career to put that kind of mindset behind her. Working with Bennett was more than enough to get excited over, allowing the actor to tick a pretty iconic figure off her acting bucket list.
