She only needed six minutes to convince the Academy of Oscars
Present in four scenes for a total of six minutes on screen, Judi Dench won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1999 for her interpretation of Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Her partner Gwyneth Paltrow received the Oscar for Best Actress and the film won five other golden statuettes (Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Artistic Direction, Best Film Score and Best Costumes).
Mrs M
She became the first woman to play M in the James Bond universe in 1995’s Goldeneye, succeeding Bernard Lee and Robert Brown in the role of the MI6 director-turned-director.
She is 7 years of mental age
On the set of the BBC series As Time Goes By, she loved making jokes. His favorite prank? Asking all the actors to hide when the director came back from his lunch break so that he found the set empty.
She makes us want to grow old
Judi Dench has been nominated for seven Oscars; each of these appointments having been awarded to her when she was over 60 years old. Who said you have to be young to be popular in Hollywood?
She is a faithful actress
She is the one who says it, in the issue of Première 479 (October 2017): “I met the real Philomena during a lunch, before filming. A remarkable person, very direct, with a truly brilliant sense of humor… Surprising qualities when you think about everything she went through. It was the sense of humor that provided me with the key to the character: an essential quality of Philomena, which never varies and which gives a certain vision of the world. Including Royal Confident, I have filmed seven times with Stephen Frears. He is terribly funny, he has a very sharp eye but always so monosyllabic. When you finish your shot, you ask him if he wants another take, he looks at you and says “yes” or “no”, sometimes “yes, but do it quickly”.
The actress is superb in Philomena, this evening on France 3.
This evening, at 9:10 p.m., France 3 is rebroadcasting the film Stephen Frears Philomena, a little gem released in 2014, whose heroine is an old lady. And what an old lady! Beautiful, dignified, touching, Philomena is in the image of her interpreter, Judi Dench.
Here are five good reasons to love the 89-year-old English actress.
The trailer for Philomena :
Philomena, the miracle of humanism, balance and subtlety by Stephen Frears (review)