When Sophia Loren intimidated Judi Dench: “I can’t have ever been more frightened”
You’d think that someone as legendary as Judi Dench couldn’t possibly be intimidated by anyone in the film industry, but the actor is just human at the end of the day, and there was a time when she was simply terrified by the prospect of working with a certain screen icon.
Dench has been acting since the 1950s, initially showing little interest in cinema. Filmmaking was strikingly different back then, and as far as Dench was concerned, taking to the stage was much more enjoyable. It actually took the actor several decades to fully immerse herself in the world of cinema, but she made herself at home straight away, with her experience of being a seasoned theatre actor guiding her throughout a new creative avenue. This is when Dench made her bold transition from Shakespearean star to Bond icon.
Throughout her time as an actor, Dench has worked with a wide array of iconic actors, though it’s often been others who have been scared to meet the actor rather than the other way around. Despite the fact that her reputation is far from problematic, she is able to pull off a certain sternness in specific roles that have made her a force to be reckoned with.
Denise Richards was terrified of the star when she appeared in The World Is Not Enough, explaining to The New York Post, “My first day of filming, I had two lines and I was afraid to say them because I had Judi Dench there. I was up all night, could not sleep, because it was with Judi Dench. And I was terrified. She couldn’t have been nicer, but I was so scared that I was going to screw up my line that I had to say that it was my first day of shooting! I didn’t want to mess up.”
You’d surely think, then, that Dench wouldn’t be scared of anyone, considering that she’s the one usually making people nervous. Yet, when she was required to perform in front of an acting legend, she suddenly tensed up. Perhaps the Dame isn’t as ice-cold as some people seem to think.
Cast your mind back to those recession-fuelled years of the late 2000s. While many of us were feeling the effects of a worldwide financial crisis, Hollywood (they don’t stop for anything) decided to churn out a new musical that no one really asked for, called Nine, rather oddly based on the classic Italian movie 8 ½. An Italian legend just so happened to be cast alongside Dench, and she was none other than Sophia Loren, and she knew that she had to impress.
Loren began acting as a teenager at the start of the 1950s, and she soon came to appear in some of Italy’s greatest cinematic exports, like Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Marriage Italian Style, and Two Women. The actor crossed over into Hollywood, too, and paired with her sex symbol status, she really did have a chokehold over cinema for many years that helped to cement her as the ultimate screen icon.
When Dench was then made to perform while Loren watched on, she got nervous. Talking to The Times, the actor explained, “I’d never met her and she arrived on set just as I was about to perform my number. She sat and watched. I said to Rob [Marshall, director], ‘I can’t have ever been more frightened than at this moment’. It was like someone had given me an enormous injection. I suddenly had to be on the ball.”
At a time when people were dying for entertainment, you’d think a star-studded musical like this would’ve been a hit, but really, Nine just stood in the shadow of 8½ and failed to captivate audiences. Realistically, a movie based on a Federico Fellini film that is already held to masterpiece status was never going to fare well.
