Dame Judi Dench | The Cambridge Union

[Music] Dame Judi Dench made her professional debut with the ultimate company and has starred in productions by the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company heralded as one of the greatest British actresses over the last century she's won ten batters seven seven Laurence Olivier Awards two Screen Actors Guild Awards two Golden Globes an Academy Award and a Tony Award she's appeared in M in every Jean source she has appeared as em in every James Bond film since golden eye in period dramas including Pride and Prejudice The Importance of Being Earnest and Cranford and a wide range of other films including shockula and Shakespeare in Love normally reluctant to speak publicly she's agreed to come and take part in a question and answer session during a break from filming her next project and I'm going to start off by asking her a few questions and then after that we're going to open it up she's agreed to well you can ask you can ask anything you want and I think he's going to answer most things afterwards she's going to be doing a book signing and say you can buy a copy of her book and furthermore okay so looking through your kind of list of works there is a huge range of things I mean from James Bond to the period dramas to the voiceover for Angelina Ballerina oh how do you decide what work to do well I I mean the thing that people get wrong about about offering your part if you're lucky enough to be offered about is that they see you in something and then you get a script short clear out of that of almost exactly the same kind of thing which is the last thing you want to do what you want to do is you know I've said recently what I would like to do is play there a woman who comes from Afghanistan and turns into a dragon in the second act only is it time you know you long to be given something that is the total antithesis of what you've Laster and it's thrilling when that happens and lucky I'm lucky to be offered to drop a duel well I think but that's what I look for I'm very bad at choosing and I don't read the play I've learned I've tried to be better at this I was asked to do a play by Peter Oh of all the royal family and I didn't read it and went to the first reading thought I made a terrible mistake and actually I had but I've got better at that now I've got better or gets it getting somebody to read it and tell me but it's entirely really to do with who asks you to do it and the other actors in it never to do is doing a one-woman show which I wouldn't go Mia so you've done an incredible range of things in it sounds like you've well I look through your book and it's like a who's who of great British theatre and is there anyone who's particularly influenced you or you got a fortnight have you there are many many people I mean I've been when I went to the Vic in 1987 I that was to be in the company when I was there for 57 to the end of 661 and I mean I was in Jutras leading actor at the time was John Neville and I learnt everything about behavior in the theatre and how to behave and how to rehearse and how to do your homework and how not to come the next day having not done your homework so you take up a lot of people's time by working out things that you could have worked out at home and being part of a company which is the thing I like best much better than anything else so and then it was run then by Michael Ben thought it was the last year of the five-year plan because when he took over the Vic it was in dire straits and he decided to do every play of Shakespeare in the five years and he started with Richard Burton in ham and he repeated ham lucky for me he repeated Hamlet in his in the last year and that's when I went to the big my just out of drama school so I've got terrible notices for a few yeah but that's the way you learn so presumably kind of etiquette for film is quite different like working in theatre how did you how did you make the transition and what kind of inspired you to then start going into a film I'll tell you a very tricky story about a film when I did them Goldeneye I think I went to the premiere of Goldeneye and I suddenly saw this actor I knew and I said hello what are you doing he's well I'm in the film as well that's the tricky bit it's not to cut you you can make a company of it and the Bond films they are a temp company because by nature the fact that they're that they're the same group of people but what the nucleus of the same group of people so you do feel like a company but it's of course you know you can start at the end of a film and and and then you come back to the beginning so you have to have a very that that unlike the theatre and I you know you never have a captive audience people can be shutting off the film or television in their homes turning off the switch and get at least in the theatre you get an audience of people who come to see you and you have to tell them the story and you can see if they leave so I mean and and I wouldn't been a film anyway I started off by going to an audition for a film and being told that I would never make films ever and then later on them that mrs. Brown was going to be made for television and Billy Connolly asked Bob Hoskins to play Queen Victoria but he turned it down so luckily I became the understudy bladed and it was done with actually for television it was any Harvey Weinstein who said this should be a film and after that then I got offered films it was it's just luck it's just luck in most cases I'm afraid depressing um one of the things that I think probably came out in that last answer is that Dame Judi kind of drops names without almost seeming to realize that their names and one of my favorite bits in her book was when she talked about how she happened the company she was working with got Grace Kelly to present her with a Paddington Bear for she was about to have a baby and they got green as Kelly to present her with Paddington Bear and for me that that was about one of the most surreal things I could possibly imagine quite surreal for me especially as I was in a play called London assurance which is actually none international but we did it we did the first the first production of it for a very long time and and I got more and more and more pregnant they were virgin in the Gloucester Chicago very very unsuitable until I think the last week somebody said it has a lying to me saying do you feel nothing stirring and it brought the house down I could stand to you and then and that night Grace Kelly the night I was leaving it happened to be coming to see Donald Sinden so that's how they look and does anyone have any questions and I'd like to ask at lunch time Dame Judi said they will have enough questions when they and I went know that they'll have plenty of questions oh you see I knew that would do you know when I spoke to the Oxford Union that was the first question how can I say that now how can I say that how would Pierce feel bonds I haven't met I could say that couldn't I know well I can't say anything I don't know both fair the two I mean I knew place is full and I've done Daniels too and we're about to do another one so they're very different the two of them the two boys boys both good actors both self-deprecating very attractive the sense of humor essential so I don't have a favorite they're two different people and both easy thank God to work with you could do anything else can I now do anything else you mean bit late could I before yes I wanted to be a designer that's what I really trained for I didn't finish my training because I decided I went to I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself as I said this before in things but I went to the Stratford in the 50s and I saw the most wonderful production of King Lear where I haven't got you I haven't I hadn't been used to seeing a great open stage at all I'd done and I'd gone to working York where we know about designing a play which you get a set and the curtain comes down for an interval and you've changed the set and the curtain goes up again that's what I'd understood and then Sunday I went distracted where there was this enormous open stage with a curtain that never came down with a huge upturned papadum really on the stage with a great rock in the middle of it which was a cave a throne and everything in the curtain of course never came down and from one scene stopped here and the other thing came straight for me was you know like a kaleidoscope like like a film I suppose and I've I guessed and I think it was overnight that I would never have that imagination I wish I had had it but I decided that I remember talking to my father about it saying I don't think I'm ever going to be the kind of designer I would like to be and so my brother who we ever only ever wanted to be an actor oh that's how I got the idea I expected he hadn't been in the family then I would have had to think of something else I sometimes longed to design something very critical of design now and if they did you encourage your thoughts affinity to act or we look Michael Devon my daughter only ever wanted to be an acrobatic nurse I said you'll go to the top of the tree I said if you do that swinging down the ward upside down wonderful and and I suppose she kind of in a way caught it from both Michael and me and if you if there's nothing else if there's nothing else you want to do then then you must do it and by that time I kind of chart here to design and decided that was the thing I wanted to do though I was rather half-hearted about beginning exactly what hope is there I don't know what the answer that is I have no idea except lobbying what good does that do I know it doesn't do any good private enterprise some people hoping that you know hoping that you'll get sponsorship of some kind but I know at least three theaters that I think against closed because of it and I don't know what else you can do because people then will turn around say there is a shortage your money what about hospitals and you know you think well fair enough but we have to have we have to have the arms and there are many people who don't understand that but I think it's essential it's essentially has been essential for you know eons you just have to be very very patient hope but by I mean I would say lobbying but I don't think that does do any good I've done that myself it doesn't do any good and I don't know what government she's going to give us any more money certainly not at the moment but I know you Yvonne are knowing Guilford probably is in a bad way and I think the rose at Kingston's a bad way and I know but I know several other small theaters are so it's just a question of hoping that you'll find somebody who isn't a better style but go on doing it that's what you want to do somehow thank you alright whatever way you can inspiration so the most inspirational recent direction you mean given to me as an inspiration yes I'll tell you I'll tell you I did Antony Cleopatra at the National with Jodie Hopkins directed by Peter wall and I was very concerned about it because people used to openly laugh at me when I said I was going to play the part and yes it's true that's not really and he said to me two wonderful things which I've always passed on I've had lots of good advice and good direction but these two things are very essential for everything any play you ever do I think one he said was don't believe everything you know how we go through a play and they say somebody says something about your character and you think oh I must feed that it because that's obviously something I've got to do that's not necessarily the truth they need not necessarily be telling the truth about you as he quoted in Obama's you know barbers spends time with the two of them goes back to Rome and is sitting in the pub with his friends and they say okay okay what she liked and he then elaborate and says hey with the Bard she sat him you know and elaborate like any of us mind and says that only while he was sitting there on the Nile you could feel the perfume coming and everything about you know he might well be exaggerating you don't have to live up to something that somebody says if you think that that is you know if you think that that is his agenda and you know your understand your own and he said another very good thing and that he said don't try and play all the character in every scene see what you have to do where the character is playing one aspect of it I mean it's hard I know when you've got one scene in a play then you have to be very very brisk and choosy and remember that less is more but he said especially about Cleopatra he said if you aspect of her in each scene that you do maybe by the end you might have her and the audience might understand about her and that's a very reassuring thing to be told if you have a huge part that King here you know you come on in you if you're not careful you strike 13th and you you know you blown it in one go so just try a little bit of each for something and then at the end with any luck she's there or he's there what else sorry oh hi many stories are filled with stifness but yes bad behavior mostly that without question doing a situation comedy is the most difficult thing I've ever done of anything because you get together on a Tuesday and you read it you set it you you rehearse it Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday then you get there on Sunday you do a huge technical rehearsal and on Sunday night the audience is sitting there waiting for you and you have no idea about it especially at a comedy if you can call it such a thing you've no idea you don't have you know in the theatre you have a preview you have previews and therefore you have a kind of you have an actor's in instinct I think about what is funny and how you tie the line but nevertheless you don't know till you have that audience there and you find yourself doing absurd things I mean the first one I did I was I'd done one before firing romance and I just remember in a scene that we'd rehearse many many times I had to walk with there were three glasses here I had to walk with two glasses from a pub you know for counter and hand them to two people what did I do when it came to it I tried to lift up three glasses of course and of course lifted them up the whole thing the audience howl with laughter that make you stupid person and you get cleaned up and you go back and what do i do again I'd do it again nothing rehearse for a week that I pick up two and go back for one why do you do that I don't know right Franklin and you have to also go and be introduced to the audience that's enough Emma to an actor beforehand you know somehow you have to go out and say good evening I'm very glad you come why just get out and do it go home I think but so it was a very it's very foreign but don't let anyone tell you it's an easy option because it is very very frightening every Sunday night before I'm saying and this is Geoffrey Palmer he is Judi Dench I used to say how have I got self-interests have I got myself to stand here they were yes have I have a watch did I wished I live there well you know we we think that it's also glamorous and lovely and you're wearing a rather good costume that practice probably feel thick I don't want to be but Elizabethan with all those things running in my hair and my mice and never taking my clothes off I don't want to do I like a bubble but you know those kind of things we glamorize a bit we try not to well Maggie dreamy Ibiza friend is Romeo and Juliet at the Vic and we had wonderful clearance wonderful and he is inspired in it very fashionable then but he had them all was sprayed they were all dirty around the bottle there's really no reason why Juliet's wearing a very very clean nightie I'm pretty unlikely Edith's evidence came to see though I didn't like it at auction all those dirty so not much I don't think I might suddenly remember that I did quite like it not come back and say favorite theaters I do I do go to the theater sometimes I get out of London that and if you're working then I have a journey after it and it's tricky for me but I do I do that and I love I certainly I love the only link in London and I love the Haymarket that's a very beautiful theater beautifully looked after and a Christie gloom as well as theater but I'm fond of a lot of theaters for lots of reasons you know and recently I was in Venice where we had taken revving and Julian plated the Finny chair and and we had done we done three performances there and now after that it was burnt down by an arsonist and so we went to see it's rebuilt its absolute if you get the chance you let's go because it's a very very beautiful theater and vast I can't imagine what we were liking it I hope we were okay but it's not a bit looking at the size of the stage we were all very young twenty three or four batteries all right but we went up an hour and a half late because it was a gondola crash that's which yes when I was updated I played in lon I played in West Africa twice I've actually lecture the second time but the first time we went in 1963 to Ghana and Nigeria Sierra Leone to do whoo there are three set plays and what do you think they were Macbeth Twelfth Night and arms and the man I can't think that was very enlightening for people there but they were brilliant because they had never seen the place before me and and and it was very somehow very easy to tell the story and it was very very good for us because you went away we thought the story and it was much much interrupted the plans were much interrupted by people shouting something or wrapping up it was very exciting very very exciting indeed and in Lagos we played we played in the theatre inlaid box which when you wanted it but when he wanted the curtain to come down there was a little pipe in the corner that the stage manager could say because the curtain could only come down if you spoke to the person who was sitting right at the back of the auditorium no when the orchestra wasn't that big actually but anyway he was called mr. obey me and they had to say mr. Raimey curtain down and it all worked wonderfully except one night when it was mr. and Amy curtain down and no curtain came down no curtain came down at all because he wasn't there he was afterwards known as mr. disobey me but it was it was very very exciting and a challenge and made us real valued plays very hard too the famous John never once said the PD letters have done the greatest disservice to the British theatre by playing Lady Bracknell because whatever way you say the line the audience will probably sell for you and I I mean they do they wait and they think and I was a lot of people said to me in fact saying the line I didn't know no I didn't like it I just chose to save a different way I kind of whispered it and it is the wonderful stage direction we say she tears up all the notes of a minute you know she takes notes a little notebook and there is a wonderful thing that she just I just pull them to a thousand pieces went on tearing but it and if you don't say or if you even pause some people say for you to it's like The Merchant of Venice I'm afraid the quality of Mercy is not strained don't even bother to say it because everybody will help you they will it's true you think I'm joking but it's true what's the best thing at Stratford was the fact that sometimes you would transpose something in a place and in some Shakespeare days are done something on this slightly trans first or the definite choose to do that that way and then you get students who come and sit on the front row with the script and you go and you think this is a new dance and you think this is gonna fool them this will relieve them and indeed it does because they go but I can't see anyone else oh I can't see I miss her laughs I miss the audience alas I miss seeing them once he reaches the set this issue Ingrid I wasn't it but once in the victim yep yeah living 1956 they went to to a Broadway with richard ii and as they were doing the lists with a whole company fortunately faced upstage the John Neville has Richard the second facing downstage a person entered at the back with an enormous suitcase and they came down to an aisle and they went along his ass and held the suitcase like that but right right along till they got their seat what would you say to somebody like that manage with mobiles now I see Peter Maxwell Davis has said everybody with a mobile that goes up the gears off should be fined and then somebody wrote a letter saying and they shouldn't be fine there should be slifer's all wrong true it's true you know everybody is asked to have the courtesy to turn them off this is a moment where one should go off but you know it is very very strappy not only for you know in a cupboard or say to the audience and it's discourteous anyway as a follow-up question have you heard that is everybody heard that yes well I think you can only do it I mean reason why Shakespeare's lasted over 400 years is because people have a temper have have approached something in a different in a different way in their interpretation and the directors interpretation of something so you all I mean if all of us were asked to do one small line or paragraph or piece of something we would all do it differently we'd all do it slightly differently and that's why they've lasted and that's the only thing you can do you can only prepare it like you have a huge well blank as if you have blank pages and you have to just absolutely look and and decide what it your director of course does but between between you and the other actors and we are acting with you you come to a conclusion about something are your interpretation of anger or greed or envy or jealousy or love or whatever it's and we would all if we were all to to to in to interpret those words we would all interpret them in a different way and our attitude to them is all different because we come from different you know angles and so a group of people doing something one we were people we split everybody out would be totally different from another one because of different things like because of experience and and your and your attitude not only to your own character but to the others that's why ever so slightly in the theater something will slightly change because you'll be given another inflation maybe one night yeah McKellen I used to try and trap each other by that but just ever so slightly giving him it's very exciting it's very very exciting and then when we did Antony there was there's a big great violent scene in it and we never we didn't want to set it Peter or but Antony Hopkins and I said can we leave this I was structured at unsaid he said yes and it never got started I never quite knew where he was going to come from so it was you know there was a liveliness about it which was very very exciting indeed and therefore he keeps it fresh and it keeps it ever so slightly different did I want to do no I don't know I have no idea what the answer it's like being ousted watch I would like to play I have no idea what I mean from what to play and whatever I had I have that I'd like to abate healed available then you master builder at one time much too late that but I would have liked to have done that but I never quite know I have to be pushed in a direction by a director I would like to work with and a group of people I would like to work with so I'm not good at the projects of what I would want to do but I proud of I suppose that I suppose I am most proud of having Blakey about her because because a wonderful thing happened also on the first night of that and that is miraculously on that night the play fell into a the best time we never done it so far all the rehearsals and we rehearse for a long time everything just and that's not very usual but the first night is so you know so so at least you could say I could say at the end of it and to people that is the best we can do if you don't like it that's the best we can do so far come back with skating six months time when we run it a bit and got better at it a lovely and Peter used to come and say he used to come and say it's got a bit Barak well I didn't understand what that meant until I came to direct something myself Ken Branagh in much ado and I knew when I'd gone back to see it I knew exactly what the rock meant because it's when you tell actors to do something and they do it indeed they do it but then they put a kind of extra bass on it and if you get everybody doing that the whole plays out of the window do you know so I suppose that is what I think what else should we get with the blue shirt towards the back present as I understand I was asked to be a child server University I couldn't do it I couldn't do that because I'm petrified of making any kind of speech I can talk to you like a conversation but if I have to make a speech that to me is too difficult people think you're very effective if you say they think oh well that's rubbish you're an actress no that's why I'm an actress because I like using somebody else's lines and I like being somebody else and I don't much like being myself just have to make speeches to people and I don't know I can't do that I was asked once to open the Kensington Antiques Fair and I was sick in the taxi on the way there on the data now yeah when I got there fortunately the whole place was open and passing that you have to do anything so is it going to be the Chancellor Brian good voice when we find out this an hour ago and should we take a question from this side on the back bed window so how do you feel about the future of em I would hang in there a while that's all right that's all I can say actually cuz of course I'm bound by mi6 now I'm going to show you something this is absolutely true but recently my family were down in the country with me and they were my brothers and wives we were all there and we were outside and beautiful they were outside and I was told now this is I promise you this it's not exaggerating I was told that the bomb stood the new-born script was about to arrive and I said oh that's funny but will you be there I said oh yes I'll be there now you have to imagine that my lawn is there my front door is there this is what happened you're me and so suddenly from this gate here comes a man totally in black from head to foot well of course you can then look at Alec Guinness look at you know Geoffrey Palmer look a lot of me we never had training and there is you can you can do that but there are certain things that you have to learn in a Drama School I think you would certain things you have to learn before you do it you have to learn I mean it's no good for instance if you're tired person don't be a bad person because you learn that a Drama School that you haven't there isn't room for that there really isn't room and you have to be able to sustain your voice you have to be able to breathe properly you have to be able to relax and so you can't be you know you learn not to be too tense you learn how to project your voice that's what I find most difficult and I spent three years really at Central just learning that from sis Barry and those are so those things if you could and you can learn that of course I know it University but you have footlights everything there so you can learn it there and if you can do that and you don't wish to go to drama school then good luck and go ahead and do that but I think it the practical way practically drama school is good for that for that discipline and learning you know we know that sometimes if you see an amateur production they can do it for three nights or four nights but maybe they'll run into trouble after that with voices and you know they ran out of kind of steam so that's what it teaches you really I think can't teach you to act really you have to have that in you how did that come to do it and I came to do it because I did it at the National I did Little Night Music at the National I'd done it I don't cut remember quite wet something like twelve or fourteen years ago we did the production and I absolutely loved it really loved it and then suddenly that I was asked to do it for Steven for his birthday one of the most frightening things known to man that and that was where my drama school was the Central School was in the Albert Hall I was there for the last few years it was there before it moved to Swiss Cottage and I thought I knew that place very very well believe me but because my eyesight isn't very good now it looked as if I was standing looking at the kind of field of corn and when I looked up there was nobody up there there's nobody up there to I couldn't you know that's very very fortuitous I tell you the modernize there what do you mean a modernized text you inch you mean Shakespeare modernize Oh at all very good is it there any good is that no I think that that I think the one of the great great reasons for doing Shakespeare is because the verse and the text is so breathtaking and to hear some of those lines and that's something you get a great chance of doing if you work with Peter wall and Trevor Nunn John Martin I mean they're aficionados about how to speak the text and and how to obey the punctuation and how to see the path lines and the other the other half of the line you know the way it's written I think that's the glory of it really I didn't want too much put put it in although what I having been in West Africa we then when I went back the next time in 69 there were a lot of suddenly there were a lot of drama groups formed of young people doing Shakespeare in just exactly whichever way they felt in order to tell the story of the scene that was incredibly exciting so perhaps the answer to your question is yes but with young people yes partly noticer not as a substitute for the verse but perhaps as a way into it yes could be when you when you come to the end of the play or any play you're doing the end of the run does the character stay with you does it color subsequent parts that you take on or do you find it quite nice to detach yourself from it and start something new I don't think it stays with you I think I don't think somebody once said that when when we were doing I was doing Macbeth and much ado and yeah comedy of errors I think at Stratford and they said does does for instance Lady Macbeth hang over a bit into the next performance I said well it can't you can't afford to you have to get rid of it at tea-time in a way because you have to then sudden you think about beatrice in much ado or you have to think about Adriana in the comedy of errors so it just be quite a quick turn and I don't think I think a lot of people think that you carry a part Herman did you you know I suppose it does to a certain extent but I don't think seriously sir do you have to be quick on it you have to learn to turn on a sixpence actually how do i well you I tell you suddenly sometimes you get asked to do something you think I know how to do this I know I and I swear but in 54 years every single play but I've ever done has thrown up some some problem that I find really hard to come to terms with all or interpret all I find hard to do so you can't get complacent about it and you can't ever think I think you know it all I know a bit about technique now and I could teach people that but I can't I think that if you'll get so sure that you can that you can play something I think it's dangerous ground to be on I think it's better to be uncertain about things and then you're in a way open to somebody else saying actually try it another way you know and the more difficult it is the better the challenge although the more irritating in a way such as you never get it right sometimes and in film very choosing formaldehyde I change it and that's really I think frustrating to watch you see and think why did I while it was that the decision I made but Bridget I died there are lots of films that are quite a lot of films I've made that I have never seen because I you know it is always that thing I was explaining actually at lunchtime it is the thing isn't it of you tapered remember when we had suddenly all had recorders when you suffer for the first time heard your voice and you thought that's not me then can't be me or you see a photograph of yourself when you think you're having a particularly good day you think well that's certainly not well you know that's what it's like and when we did Macbeth with Ian McKellen for Trevor Nunn I I thought that sometimes it was quite remarkable to play in the production well I saw when I televised it when it was televised and I was completely shattered and I thought that can't be what we did and certainly I thought what I had done was better than what I saw but it obviously wasn't there it was and so it's very very frustrating films I think are very frustrating because you cannot change them the thing about the theatre is that you can change it although what I'm directing much adieu I gave an actress something a bit of business with an apple but used to go down so well and I went back to see it to give them notice and I looked Thanks I looked and she cut it I said why have you cut that good business with the Apple she did my mother didn't like it that's why directors won't let your friends and lovers come to previews all the first night actually because that puts the critics back up they suddenly hear of people laughing that you have to be a suppose you have to you have to learn to judge what you think is right when you play a part but I think that it's I think you have to rely on a very good director and perhaps not your friends to say Oh wonderful do you know [Music] forming again a musical I don't know I was meant to be doing something at the moment called song time on song time which was in on Broadway but it's been cancelled what he's looking because has been postponed for a bit and it may not be next ago or later this year I don't know and maybe I'm not able to do it I hope I am because it was a thrilling experience I must say well the challenges of performing in a musical is you have to have a single voice but there again like I said to this gentleman here um our prince who who I you know I've been Sally Bowles in cabaret yeah yeah production in London and he he said whatever you do you know read the book read the book about her read what Christopher Isherwood said about her that she couldn't possibly ever have been a star that she was a girl from a middle-class family who'd fetched up in Berlin throwing around the racy costume and singing in a voice that that you know was not actually acceptable and then and he also said this is a very good tip if you ever do a musical he said to me what you must never do is speak in one voice and sing in another the voice you speak in must be the voice you're singing and he also said if the song doesn't take the story on in in steps of 10 the narration then it's not worth doing and that's very good that's very good because it gives you it gives you an acting chance to do in the song because you think this is this is I've got to tell this bit of story here but I you know I was petrified because I sing well but like I speak but he said that is what that's what you should do don't stop to be a suddenly an opera singer or singer voice that we don't recognize good chip okay what else this blue shirt gentleman he read reviews now anymore not any me not since I got some real killers I thought now I'm not going to do that again it's only because the time I organized I decided that it was because I got some good reviews and some bad reviews all for one play and I thought well who do I believe it's much better to be true to your director and your actors and indeed hear what the audience says but nevertheless you know that you can't how do you balance it how do you balance a bad review and a good review I don't know so I don't we don't know I just can't and you know anyway instinctively I think if you're no good to the part and why should i betray my director so you just have to tell the story to the best of your ability and somehow hope that it it will make somebody angry or happy or you know whatever somehow reactant audience so then they're slightly different when they go out then they weren't when they came in already from this side keep with this side okay fine oh yes is somebody here oh yeah go for it seven minutes eight minutes how long was it I'm not quite sure or not very long and I didn't I after I get mrs. brown with John Madden I just said I had such a wonderful experience I said to me forever if ever you ever part but it's just sweeping up at the back or walking across the back quickly or anything I would I volunteer myself for it I'd say I didn't get it's got no lines or anything and then sometime later Hiromi said I have got a part which almost only Christmas cross the back but wear a big dress is definitely that was how that came about and we had a glorious time I wasn't never very long but I had a very good time doing it and he's a great great director I think I've just been in India with him for nine and a half weeks making something that was come out later this year he's a most marvelous director to a man I expect you seen lots of things he's done he's very very good reassuring Shakespeare tragedy or comedy maybe a comedy one like no tragedy the next which will you know if you're in there in the season and strapped and you get a chance to do you've got a chance to play several things that I've never liked doing as a merchant of venice but i don't like to play much I should never have said yes well that's that's the treat of it you know really those great players getting a chance to play or say three or four parts in one season that's I think the most exciting of all the juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy the history isn't in a good theater with an audience what could be better do we mess around on stage all the time never with the lines never never Michael Gambon is one of the worst people to be on stage [Music] when you feel me now you get ITT you don't get a chance to miss a lot around with a film with film lines that's why you have to know it too very well because it's much too expensive Amy is talking to the press though do you have like sort of words where you have to repeat a word ten times over to when talking to the press or make something up with neutral in the crisis what exactly you play games with the press do I play games with a brick oh you mean the press well you know talking to the press is another thing entirely that's that's hard I think because the press nearly always come with an agenda of some kind so you know are you alluding to that wonderful remark when they said to Michael Bryant he said I was homosexual once but he said I stopped it because it made my eyes water in the breasts that was reported I don't know I didn't know really where you are some questions to the best of your ability and sometimes the questions are amazingly stupid that you get asked you know by the press there they take they take one aspect of something and they won't get better go [Music] well you have to make up your mind about it then you yourself really I mean you you you sometimes do have done we sometimes work with directors who have you have a very alt alternative view to what you think alternative idea about something which which is which is maybe contrary to what you believe or what you feel but at the same time it may be very good for you to have that challenge and suddenly rethink something in another way so it's all I mean it's a you know it's not the age of director saying and you will do this and you will do them it's much more democratic than that it's democratic between you and the director and there are other actors so that you you do do what the director things but somehow you work it in a way that you somehow can achieve that and and that's the that's the challenge you have to make it somehow your own if it's his if it's he's strongly his idea that's why he he's probably said something to you originally anyway he asked you to Blair Park he will say that is my idea about it if you strongly disagree with that and say well that's not what I fit then don't do the part but if you want to be chairman which you didn't think well I'll try that that way and it might be wonderful and I think it often is but I think there it's up for grabs sometimes if somebody who's not you you can say you need to somebody could I try something else I once did that for seven days in the Cherry Orchard he was very very young at the time a very young director and I said Sam do you think I could try this can I do this scene in a slightly different way and show you this he said you can but it won't work he said and then he said that there's some kind of sideways I never let him forget that what else let's just take one last question and I I just want to be employed I don't want to you know I don't want to do this butts in wheelchairs and so it's just as things happen really it's the decision you make to do something and hopefully what it is we'll try to in some way and so whether it's but I must say that I having had in a way an aversion to making films cuz I didn't know about the business of making films at all I didn't enjoy it much but I enjoy it now quite a lot because I've learned an incredible amount from everybody so I'm not just frightened of it and I and I enjoy I enjoy not the repetition of it you know but on the other hand if you're doing a play or theater which you're enjoying to do there's nothing like the laughter of an audience if it's a competition actually or the still audience if it isn't and also the fact that each night you can you can slightly hone it better you can you can you might get it better on the other hand as I said before you can it can go off the rails and you have to default back but you do get a chance and the audience is what T you know people say you can rehearse for so long and you can you can address all the things you think you have to address then comes a moment when an audience comes in and they teach you the most incredible amount of the play that's why we now have previews where as when I went to the Vic in 57 we know previews at all we stroked encode just open like that man and which was frightening and very immediate you know we didn't have a chance to to play something in why because you can go to a preview now then you can go when the players opened you might find quite a considerable change in it but that's that's the that's the input of the audience I don't think the audience realizes how important it is sometimes somebody once said to me does the audience make any difference - I said if it doesn't make any difference I'm going to stay at home you know why would I go to the theater why would I give it it's always different every single night the audience is different so there we are um I think we'll leave it danger you thank you so much for coming it's been a pleasure

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 100,523

Rating: 4.7587547 out of 5

Keywords: Dame, Judi, Dench, The, Cambridge, Union, Society

Id: H3THkWu6jzE

Length: 60min 13sec (3613 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2012