by Judi Dench
Billy and I had to do so many interviews, one after another, that he couldn’t take them seriously. When he was asked for the umpteenth time what it was like working together, he would scream, ‘She’s a nightmare, ooh nauseous, an absolute nightmare.’ Then they would ask me, ‘Apart from Mrs Brown and “M”, have you done anything else?’ So I thought, Well, that is the whole of my theatre career gone swish, straight past my ear.
We had a wonderful week in New York and Los Angeles, and Larry Guittard came with me to the premieres in both places; we have stayed good friends ever since A Little Night Music. I thought that was it, never dreaming that I would be back again the next year, when to my great surprise I was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Queen Victoria. By then I was back at the National Theatre, playing in Amy’s View.
15
Amy’s View and Hollywood
1997-1998
I CAME TO ADMIRE DAVID HARE’S gifts as a screenwriter when I worked on Wetherby and Saigon – Year of the Cat, especially after all the problems we had with the latter, so I was keen to appear in his new play Amy’s View at the National Theatre when Richard Eyre asked me. My part was Esme, a successful actress who in the last act has lost all her savings in the Lloyd’s Names insurance crash in the City. We had a particularly strong cast, including Joyce Redman, and Ronald Pickup and Samantha Bond, both of whom I had worked with before. But from quite early on I found David’s script much more difficult than I expected. At the end of the first week I went for a costume fitting, and when I came back I went straight to Richard and said, ‘You must let me go, I can’t do it, I can’t learn it.’ I was in the most frightful state about it. I have never experienced anything quite like that before.
David’s dialogue is very like that of Shaw or Wilde: you can go completely off-beam, it isn’t naturalistic at all, it has its own metre, and you can hear it. It is because we don’t speak correctly any more, so you suddenly think, Oh, the word comes there in the sentence, does it? David writes wonderfully rhythmically, and once you have learnt it, it is just a rhythm in your mind.
When I came home, Michael said to me, ‘Pull yourself together, do what I do, go up and run a bath, get into the bath, and then you’re not allowed to get out until you know three or four pages, or whatever you set yourself.’ It was a wonderful way of learning, especially if you did it last thing at night. The difference between us was that Michael would come home and sit in the kitchen, and just work and work at learning lines, and I couldn’t do that. He used to say to me, ‘You learn the lines by osmosis.’ That was true, I always had, but now I had to adopt Michael’s version of learning Esme’s lines. I would do an hour in the bath, just going at it every day. I hate working like that, but it was a necessity.
The other difficulty was having to smoke in the play. I don’t like it at all. I started on the first day of rehearsal, but I dreaded it, I never developed a taste for it, and it made me very sick sometimes. But I could see that it was essential as punctuation in David’s script. When my driver, Bryan, was waiting for me with the car one day, he overheard one woman say to another as they came out, ‘She doesn’t usually smoke in a play, does she?’ as if it was me smoking and not the character in the play.
One journalist even said to me, when she interviewed me about Mrs Brown, ‘Oh, I found it so irritating, you upstaging people looking for your cigarettes, I longed to shout out, “Sit down for goodness’ sake and be quiet.”’ That undermined me terribly. When we came to do it on the Friday night, and I got to the speech about the journalists, I absolutely let fly. Samantha Bond was playing my daughter, Amy, and she was so taken aback by this that she asked our wig lady, ‘Has something upset Judi?’ ‘Why?’ ‘My God, she didn’t half let fly about the journalists.’
After one performance, I was going on to dinner at the Ivy with Nigel Havers and his wife and parents. I had a bunch of visitors in my dressing room, so the others went on ahead, while Nigel waited to take me. When we got out of the car, we were surrounded by photographers, it so put me off that I didn’t want to go any more. Another time I was waiting outside the Connaught for my old friend Pinkie Johnstone, now Kavanaugh, when I saw this man with a long-range lens, and wondered what he was photographing. Then my picture appeared in OK magazine, carrying a lot of Marks and Spencer bags, looking extremely cross, with a caption, ‘Dame Judi knows how to shop.’ He even followed us round to Scott’s restaurant, and took more pictures of Pinkie and me sitting outside. I don’t see how that is interesting, for one thing, and I really don’t think that is anybody else’s business.
David Hare was a huge comfort throughout the rehearsal period from the very beginning. A couple of weeks before we started he sent me a lovely note with a little appeal at the end:
Dear Judi,
Somebody sent me a tape of Mrs Brown. I think it’s one of your greatest performances. It’s certainly your greatest film performance. I loathe the bloody monarchy, as you know, but even I found your grief for Albert and your relationship with the ghillie unbearably moving. It is great acting.
I’m thrilled we start soon. No need to reply to this. Oh, one thing: why not be as good in my play as you are in the film?
Many congratulations.
Love,
David
He came to nearly every rehearsal, and it can sometimes be very off-putting to have the author there all the time, but he laughed at all the jokes every time, which was most encouraging. He said he was happy to do any rewrites if we were unhappy about anything, but asked us to say so earlier rather than later. I nearly asked him to change my entrance at the end of the play in a howling storm, when I had a bucket of water thrown over me before coming on. I said, ‘That’s going to make a great curtain-call, dripping wet!’ but I could see what an effective moment that entrance was.
David was much less sympathetic to the audience at the fund-raising gala preview for the sponsors. I was more than a bit daunted myself on that occasion, but in fact that was quite a good thing. I was so frightened at the gala that it completely took the edge off the first night, which became a real work-in-progress night, whereas the gala had been utter white-hot fear.
I just thought to myself, Stuff you lot, I haven’t worked forty years in the theatre to let a bunch of dinner-jacketed stiffs oppress me. I have got a job of work to do here, I have got to remember the lines. Part of the tension was caused by the large number of people in the audience who had lost lots of money in the Lloyd’s Names crash, just like Esme in the play. At the supper afterwards one woman told me tearfully, ‘That’s my story too.’
David rather lost his temper with some of the sponsors when they criticised the play. Then he came shamefaced into my dressing room and said, ‘Did you hear what I’ve done?’ ‘No.’ ‘I told them to get out. They said they were entitled to their opinion, and I said, “Yes but not to have free drink.”’ That is such a funny argument, but David is like any of us – you are very raw and wounded at such a point.
Hal Prince came round afterwards one night, and said, ‘You’ve got to come to New York with this.’ I told him that I wanted to go to New York with it, but that Meryl Streep and Glenn Close had been to see it the week before, so I knew what was going to happen. The next morning Hal sent me a note, saying, ‘Meryl and Glenn are too goddamn smart to try to muscle in on your role, come to New York.’ We did eventually, but I had to go to America for a different reason long before we took the play.
We made another series of As Time Goes By during the run of Amy’s View, and one day I was having lunch in the canteen at the BBC rehearsal rooms in Acton when Tor Belfrage (who took over as my agent when her husband Julian died in 1994) rang to say, ‘You’ve been nominated for an Oscar for Mrs Brown.’ That was the first I knew of it, and so that meant a lot of rushing about getting dresses, shoes and goodness knows what else. By then Amy’s View had come out of the repertoire at the National, and transferred to the Aldwych for a continuous run. The nicest thing about that transfer was tha
t Michael was going to do his one-man show, John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, at the Duchess Theatre just round the corner, so we were able to travel home together.
The snag was that his opening night was the very night of the Oscars in Hollywood, and there was no way he could come with me, so I took Finty instead. My first reaction was that I couldn’t go either, because I was in the theatre and I didn’t approve of buying out performances to make such a thing happen. But Harvey Weinstein insisted, and Miramax bought out two nights of the play so that I could go to Los Angeles.
I thought that this was going to be such an extraordinary experience that I had better try to keep some sort of diary, so here are a few short extracts of some of the stranger happenings from 27 February onwards, when I first heard about my brief release from the Aldwych:
COUNTDOWN TO THE OSCARS!
or Will I be the only unlifted face in Hollywood?
Zandra Rhodes and Donatella Versace both offered dresses – but I shall go to Nicole Farhi and keep it in the family.
(Mrs David Hare!!)
On Friday at the half a huge bouquet of blossom and yellow roses arrives at the theatre + a bottle of KRISTAL champagne from DUSTIN HOFFMAN, who had seen Mrs Brown and is v. complimentary. I shall be able to write a book entitled My life with the stars!!
3 March
Interview with Marylu Dent down the phone to LA. ‘This may be indelicate but you seem to have a lot of energy for someone of your age…’ Veteran – old – Old Guard, etc.
Tuesday, 10 March
8.00. Had to talk to James Nochty [I couldn’t spell Naughtie] for the Today programme. Live!! I mumbled a lot and didn’t really come up with the goods.
4.30. To Fouberts Place to meet Nicole. She’d done several designs and we chose one of them. We decided on the grey organza not the frost.
Monday, 16 March
Fitting at 117B Fulham Rd with Nicole and Barry & the design team. Saw a wonderful trouser suit. They are altering it for me. Got a 4-leaf clover from Van Cleef & Arpels for luck. Turned down Asprey!!!
19 March
Critics Circle Lunch. They all wished me well. Fitting with Nicole 4.30. Tor faxed me through diamond earrings from VC & A’s. Chose figure of eights – they are only 50 thousand dollars a pair!
Saturday, 21 March
Long talk to P. Hall who rang to wish me luck. Note from Liam Neeson. Cards. Flowers from Pauline & John Alderton. GPS [Geoffrey Palmer] & Sal rang. After the show when I’d taken my wet dress off all the crew and company were waiting with champagne & a lovely card & Ronnie Pickup made a speech.
Sunday, 22 March
Got to Heathrow Terminal 4 and were met as we checked in. The staff at Gatwick had sent good wishes. Our dresses were hand carried to the plane – WE HOPE!! Phoned Mike. Called at last to the plane – photographed. Sat right at the very front of the plane L & R.
Champagne, lunch and crashed out for a while. Watched Morgan Freeman (what a good actor) on the TV. Invited on the flight deck for landing. At 10.30ish I went up on the flight deck and watched us coming into LA. Incredible. Met by v. nice man who escorted us through customs etc. Dress bag had been put with luggage. Tor met us & we all went to 4 Seasons. Then we bathed and changed and by 5.20 Tor, Gene Parseghian [William Morris Agency], Fints & I all went off in a S.T.R.E.T.C.H. limo along Rodeo Drive to the Beverley Wilshire Hotel. Finty got frightfully excited when she recognised it as the hotel used by Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Up to a room to be interviewed by 4 or 5 reporters (all British). Then downstairs and into Harvey Weinstein’s party [Miramax]. Saw Beverley, Veronica, Sinclair & Lisa [up for the Make-up Award for Mrs Brown]. Saw Dougal [Rae] & Jane, & Harvey who said H. B. Carter & I had to do a skit on Good Will Hunting [another of the Oscar-nominated films]. I nearly freaked out. Madonna & Demi Moore were sitting at the next table. Anyway – we did it and had to be 2 construction workers wearing hard hats. I was someone called CHUCKIE & had to say fuck a lot. It brought the house down.
Robin Williams was Mrs Brown but kept lapsing into Billy Connolly! We were given a box of chocs with a little Oscar attached. When I opened it, it wasn’t chocs, but a framed photo of John Madden talking to me as Queen Victoria.
After that I simply didn’t have time to keep up the diary. The whole thing was absolutely wonderful, but it is like nothing we do here. You start getting ready at crack of dawn, there are hairdressers and people to do your nails, your feet, and goodness knows what arrives – permanent orange juice, and coffee, and strawberries dipped in chocolate.
After lunch I called Michael at the Duchess Theatre. He said they cheered a lot at the curtain call for Brief Lives, so then a great weight fell off us, and we were in the right mood to go to the Oscars. We got dressed and climbed into this vast limo. They said ‘Are you ready for the red carpet?’ but nobody prepares you for that. It is about a hundred yards long, with the bleachers going up so high, and absolutely packed full of people. It took me an hour to get along it, with all the cameras and interviewers. Finty said, ‘Mama, look,’ and up in the sky at that minute a plane had made a huge heart with a vapour trail, that was lovely. Then we went in, by which time my feet were killing me. As soon as I sat down I saw Vanessa Redgrave with Franco Nero, and we had a bit of a chat.
I remember just being hysterical with Finty and Helena Bonham Carter, saying, ‘Just look at us, look at the dresses and jewels and things, and nothing to show for it.’ There were five of us nominated – the other four were Helena, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, and Helen Hunt who won it for her performance in As Good as It Gets. She was the only American nominee, and somebody said to us afterwards that of course none of the rest of us stood a chance because we had split the British vote four ways. When I went on to the Miramax party an interviewer thrust a microphone at me and said, ‘A nation weeps.’
I said, ‘Oh, come on!’
‘You must be very disappointed.’
‘No, I’m not disappointed at all. I didn’t expect to win.’
I really didn’t, and I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything. The whole event is amazingly tatty, and absurd, and we had a wonderful time. We flew back the next evening, landed at Heathrow on the Wednesday morning at 11.30 a.m., and I was at the Aldwych by 2 p.m. I had a couple of hours’ sleep, and then went on. It was almost as if I had never been away. The company kept telling me I had been robbed, but what really took me aback was the audience reaction that night. As soon as I made my first entrance they rose for a standing ovation, which never happens in London. I hugged Sam as Amy, and whispered, ‘What do I do now?’ She whispered back, ‘Just go on hugging me.’ To my astonishment the same thing happened every night that week.
A little later I did win the BAFTA Best Actress Award for Mrs Brown, and this time I could actually say I was robbed, as the statuette was stolen before I had even left the hotel. BAFTA were so quick in replacing it that I came to the conclusion this must happen all the time.
16
Shakespeare in Love and Broadway
1998-2000
I SO ENJOYED WORKING WITH John Madden on Mrs Brown that I wrote him a note after we finished filming, to say, ‘I’ll slouch in any doorway, or walk through the back of any shot for you in your next picture, that’s a promise.’ Some time later he rang me up and said, ‘What I have in mind is not exactly any doorway or passing through the back of any shot.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’ll do it, I shan’t read it, I’ll do it.’
The film was Shakespeare in Love, and the role was Queen Elizabeth I. She only had three short scenes, and I think that John must have been nervous that the part was not big enough, because when we next met at a BAFTA awards evening he said to me, ‘Now we really need to sit down and talk.’
‘You’ve changed your mind! You don’t want me.’
‘No, no, I just wanted to know that you liked the script, and still felt happy about doing the part.’
‘Of course, I think it’s wonderful.’ But I couldn’t resist taking ad
vantage of his nervousness. ‘It will be the same perf., you know, different frock.’
I shouldn’t have joked about the frock, because that was the hardest part of the performance. It was tremendously heavy, it took two people to lift it on to me, and three people to do it up. I couldn’t get out of it at lunchtime, and had to sit bolt upright to eat – it was agony. After the first fitting I rang up Sandy Powell, the costume designer, and said, ‘Sandy, I don’t think I should be at a great disadvantage with Gwyneth Paltrow. I think I should be able to look her in the eye.’ He said that he thought the same thing, and then these vast platform shoes arrived, with six-inch heels, which were so uncomfortable to wear. They all called me ‘Tudor Spice’, and sometimes John Madden would say, ‘Sorry, we’ll have to go again, we caught a glimpse of Tudor Spice there.’
On top of that, there was the make-up, which took four hours to put on. Veronica Brebner did my make-up for both Queen Victoria and Elizabeth; she was up for an Oscar for each of them and never got it, which she should have done, because she was so meticulous. My hair had to be pinned, and then glued, the bald cap went on, and then it was all bled in. Then the make-up, then the wig, and then the headdress. I wanted her to have bad teeth, and all her skin cracked, and they did get some terrible teeth made for me. But because it would be so huge on the screen, when your face is three times the size of your house, they said it would be too grotesque, and the Americans wouldn’t accept that. So they just painted my own teeth brown, which looked bad enough.
Gwyneth was playing the invented character of Viola, the object of Shakespeare’s love; the latter was played by Joseph Fiennes. Tom Stoppard had written the final version of the script, and we had a wonderful cast, including Colin Firth, Simon Callow, Tom Wilkinson, Antony Sher, Geoffrey Rush, Rupert Everett, Martin Clunes, Imelda Staunton, and Ben Affleck, so there was much press interest. Somebody made up a totally untrue story about Gwyneth and me, saying there was a frostiness between us, when we got on perfectly from day one, we never had a cross word. We didn’t meet that much, because we didn’t have many scenes together, but we had the most marvellous day sitting in the caravan, having a good laugh. When we took Amy’s View to Broadway, she came to one of the earliest performances with her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, and brought her round afterwards. This malicious story about the filming really annoyed me; it seems as if when journalists don’t have a story they will just make anything up, to try and cause trouble.