The regal but subversive Dench
LOS ANGELES — Judi Dench loves a good surprise. She’s cooking one up on this late autumn morning in September, her last day in Los Angeles promoting her new movie, “Victoria & Abdul,” before returning home to London.
Dench’s daughter, Finty Williams, an accomplished actress in her own right, thinks her mom is returning to England several days from now. But that would mean Dench would be missing Williams’ 45th birthday.
So Dench has concocted an elaborate ruse, having friends send her daughter pictures of her out and about in Los Angeles — restaurant meals, “Victoria & Abdul” promotional events, Mom sitting in gardens and enjoying the sunshine — all the way up to the night before her birthday. Meanwhile Dench will be lying low in London, waiting to walk into Williams’ house on the big day.
“We’ve always done surprises in our house,” Dench says, a twinkle in her eye. “Finty’s very clever though. I hope I’ve fooled her.”
With impeccable acting credentials that include long stints with England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre Company and a movie career spent playing more queens than she could possibly remember (she has now played Victoria twice, following an earlier turn in “Mrs. Brown”), we tend to think of Dench as a commanding figure armed with perfect diction and an imposing manner, a woman not to be trifled with. (Ask 007.)
What’s often forgotten amid all the accumulated majestic splendor is what Stephen Frears, Dench’s director in five movies (including “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” “Philomena” and now “Victoria & Abdul”) calls her “mischievous and subversive” qualities.
“Oh, subversive,” Dench purrs. “I rather like that. ‘Subversive’ is interesting, I should say.”
Last year, on the occasion of Dench’s 81st birthday in December, Williams threw her mother a glorious dinner party, flying in all sorts of friends from the States. Shortly afterward, she took Dench out to lunch and after they finished, they were walking up St. Martin’s Lane when Williams stopped in front of a tattoo parlor. She told her mum, “Here is your present if you like it. Do you want to tattoo?”
“Sure, I’ll have a tattoo,” Dench responded without hesitation. And that’s how the words “CARPE DIEM” — all caps, block type — came to be engraved on the inside of Dench’s right wrist.
Didn’t she have some hesitation about the pain from the needles?
“Oh, nooooo,” Dench says. “There was somebody having their whole leg done right next to me. What am I going to say?”
“Besides, if you can have a needle through your eye, I assure you, you can have a needle on your wrist,” Dench adds.
Take note. In that last sentence, Dench acknowledges the invasive treatments she has endured due to macular degeneration, a disease that leads to irreversible vision loss, and sweeps it all away with standard British fortitude.
“You get on with it, don’t you?” Dench says. We’re sitting an arm’s length apart at a small table in a hotel lounge, having coffee. She notes she can only see the outline of my face.
“You can adapt to anything quickly,” she continues. “If I had gone to bed one night able to read and then I was not able to read the next morning, that would be one thing. This was gradual, so I could adjust. I have a wonderful friend who reads to me. And I have everything blown up to 33-point size or something … it looks ridiculous. It doesn’t matter. It works.”