by Judi Dench
We even had disputes about the hotels booked for us, until Joan Plowright put her foot down. When we got to Rome we went to the hotel, and were sent up in a lift with a porter. He just said to me, ‘That’s your landing,’ so I said, ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ and got out to find my room. It was a very dark room, and the air-conditioning didn’t work. It was appalling, but I hadn’t been in it for five minutes before the phone rang, and it was Joan. ‘Darling, we’re leaving here, it’s a knocking-shop, I’ve heard two at it on my way up.’ So we walked around Rome looking for a hotel. We went to the Majestic, and she insisted on seeing the rooms. She was so wonderful; she said, ‘Lady Olivier would like a suite of rooms, we want at least three, because Maggie won’t want to go to that knocking-shop.’
In the end we went to the Eden Hotel, and she said, ‘Have you got three nice suites here? We only had rooms at the other hotel.’ They said they did, so she said, ‘We’ll have them. Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, and Lady Olivier, we’ll have the lot.’ But they were not available until the next day, so we had to go back for just one night, which was awful. The dining room was underground, and it was all self-service.
Maggie had gone home for the weekend, so she had a terrible time when she got back, trying to find us. First she went to the original hotel, where they told her we had checked out, and as Joan had booked us in at several hotels before we found the Eden, poor Maggie had done the scenic journey round Rome before she finally found us at the Eden.
The three of us spent a lot of time on their lovely roof terrace. To begin with, they told us that we couldn’t eat out on the terrace, we could only eat in the restaurant. But after a while, I think they were so ashamed of us that they said we could eat round the corner, they hid us from the public. So we ate there every evening when we came in. The film company said they wouldn’t pay for the Eden, we would have to pay the extra ourselves. But since we were doing publicity interviews at the Eden for the film, Joan and Maggie both said, ‘We’re sorry, but if we’re being interviewed there, we’re not paying for it, and we’re not going to be interviewed any more unless you pay for it.’ So in the end they did.
I remember Maggie and I having the most extraordinary experience when we went to see the Pantheon. It was brilliant sunshine outside, and when we came in out of the sunshine the whole place was very misty. Round the dome two white gulls were circling, they didn’t even flap their wings, they were just cooling off in there for about ten minutes, and we couldn’t take our eyes off them.
Next I had my third stint as ‘M’ in The World Is Not Enough, directed by Michael Apted this time, who I thought was brilliant, and it was a very good script. I had complained that I never got taken to any of the exotic locations in the film, so this time they said they were going to take me to Scotland, and to Turkey. The nearest I got to either was a painted background of Loch Lomond, and a Winnebago trailer with Innsbruck stuck on it, so I could say I had been in Innsbruck. It is only recently that I have been taken to locations in Prague and Nassau.
What I enjoyed most was the day at Swindon when ‘M’ had to go up in a little glass helicopter, which looked like a see-through insect. It was a very blustery day, and up we went, with my assistant Colin Salmon in the back, and a whole lot of bodyguards for ‘M’. We had to wait for the action and then come swooping down; we did that three times to get the shot, and it was thrilling, I loved it. That took the whole day, and when I got home I happened to look at the call sheet. On the list was ‘M’s stunt-double’. So I guessed that they must have thought I was going to say, No, I won’t go up in a helicopter. I was really pleased that it hadn’t come to the crunch.
Sophie Marceau was brilliant in the film, and in the scene I was doing with her I was riveted by the coat she was wearing, and thought I must draw it, so that perhaps I could get it copied. I asked our costume designer, Lindy Hemming, where it had come from, and she said, ‘Oh, they’re in Beauchamp Place, do you want to see if they’ve got a coat like that?’ and I said, ‘Yes, please.’
My agent, Tor, came to see me at lunchtime and asked me, ‘Who do you want to do your clothes for the Oscars?’
‘I don’t know, Sophie Marceau’s clothes in this are absolutely beautiful.’
‘Well, I’ll go to them and ask if they would like to supply some stuff, or would they like to see you about fitting something.’
About ten minutes after Tor had left, Lindy came in to say, ‘Those people are very keen that they should do some clothes for the Oscars.’ So I had already asked her, and they had already offered, and we hadn’t known. By sheer serendipity, the Bond film provided the clothes I needed for going to the Oscars with Shakespeare in Love.
If 1999 was a watershed year for me, it was not because of the Oscar and my time on Broadway, but because of something far more important in my family life. That was when we first learned of Michael’s illness, and I came home to nurse him.
18
Michael
1999-2001
TOWARDS THE END OF THE run of Amy’s View in New York Michael became ill, so when I came home I didn’t work at all from July to October 1999. Then I continued to turn down all the theatre work I was offered in favour of a few short spells of filming, so that I could be at home with him most of the time.
The first of these was The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, for BBC Television, and it had the most brilliant and funny script by Alan Plater. I played the youngest member of a wartime girls’ band, who decide to get back together years later for one last concert. The others were Leslie Caron, Olympia Dukakis, Cleo Laine, Joan Sims, Billie Whitelaw, June Whitfield, and Ian Holm who was dodging the Army so was forced to play in drag. None of us were musicians, of course, so we had to have lessons in how to finger our instruments convincingly, even though the actual music would be dubbed in later. I had to play the saxophone, and my teacher was Kathy Stobart, a member of Humphrey Lyttelton’s Band.
Kathy was marvellous. I learned how to play a scale on the saxophone, even though I found it very hard to make it look authentic. The family were all hugely relieved when I had finished the film, and stopped practising on the saxophone at home. Everyone used to go out of the house when I did it, including the cats, who just took off, they absolutely hated it.
I had to play the tenor sax, and Billie Whitelaw was on the alto sax, and there was one scene with all of us on the school stage with our instruments beside us. Somebody said, ‘Now we’ll play for you,’ and we had to pick them up and play. But Billie had picked up the one on her left instead of her right, so she was playing mine, and I had no instrument to play. We laughed so much about that, but it was easy to tell that we weren’t really professional musicians. Alan Plater later adapted his screenplay for a stage musical, but then of course they had to find people who could actually play the instruments as well as act. I have met people who saw it and had a lovely evening, so it must have come together very well.
I played a much less happy-go-lucky character in my next film, Chocolat, as a very grim-faced grandmother, who is charmed by the arrival in a French village of a young chocolate maker, played by Juliet Binoche. All my scenes were shot here, because I couldn’t go away to France, and the reconstruction was wonderful, but in my big birthday party scene we had the most torrential rain you could imagine. There was a great big blue canopy over us outside, and we kept shooting bits of the scene whenever there was a lull in the rain. The crew had to come with big poles every few minutes and push at the canvas, to shake off the great pools of water which had accumulated. I kept thinking this was ridiculous, we were meant to be in this idyllic wonderfully sunny place in France. However, I did get to dance with Johnny Depp, and when it was cut out of the film I was very miffed.
I couldn’t be mad with the director for very long. Lasse Hallström was Sweden’s equivalent of John Madden. I had exactly the same feeling of somebody in total control on the set, yet very laid-back with time for a joke, and time to talk to you. I trusted Lasse in the same way
that I trusted John, or Trevor Nunn, or Richard Eyre, or Peter Hall, or Anthony Page. So I was thrilled when he asked me to be in his next film, The Shipping News, to be shot in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. But that had to be put on hold until the following year.
Michael had got progressively weaker. The original diagnosis of pleurisy had been wrong, and it was discovered that he had lung cancer, which was now inoperable. He tried to carry on working for a while, mostly in radio, recording more of the Conan Doyle mysteries, playing Dr Watson to Clive Merrison’s Sherlock Holmes, but then he had to give that up.
One thing that especially pleased us both was his appointment in November 2000 to the Order of St Gregory, the Papal equivalent of a knighthood. He wanted to receive it in Westminster Cathedral, but he could no longer face the journey to London, so it was conferred at home in Surrey, on 10 January 2001. Afterwards Michael said to me, ‘I wish we could have a rerun of today.’ I said, ‘I wish we could too.’ It was a huge honour, and very rare, so it was terrific that that happened.
Michael died the next day, and Finty and some close friends took the burden off me of telling everybody. Our churchgoing had always been very ecumenical: Michael went to Mass and I went to my Quaker Meeting, but we often attended our local Anglican church together, so that was where we held the funeral, with four priests sharing the prayers. To begin with, we had thought of only having a small family funeral, but so many friends rang up and said that they wanted to come, that in the end the church was packed to overflowing, with standing-room only at the back. The readings were by Clive Merrison, Richard Henders, and Roger Rees, who flew in specially that morning from New York.
If a funeral is to be a wonderful farewell, that is what it was, and I believe it was exactly what Michael would have wanted. Trevor Nunn delivered the most beautiful and touching address, part of which I would like to quote here:
I think it’s only possible to discern the capacity for great acting in performers who themselves have a greatness of spirit, who have insight and burning moral passion that is transfiguring. I am talking of Mike’s soul, his largesse and generosity of spirit, so evident in his encouragement of young and emergent talents; his spirit, which made him and Judi wonderful partners through all the hills and valleys of life, whose shared bravery and optimism in the last two years have been a beacon to all of their friends, as we have marvelled at their strength.
I remember them courting, as if it was last year, in Stratford, and London, and Australia – and when they got married, Mike said to me he was in the grip of feelings beyond any happiness he had ever dreamed of. He told me more than once that his favourite line in Shakespeare was ‘Lady, you have bereft me of all words’ – because, when he was with Jude, he knew exactly the full extent of what Shakespeare was saying. A fine romance indeed.
I was so moved by this that I asked Trevor to give it again at Michael’s Memorial Service six months later at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden. We held it on 9 July, Michael’s birthday, and the speakers this time included John Moffatt, Kenneth Branagh and Ned Sherrin. Patrick Doyle sang two of his songs for Ken’s film of Henry V, in which both Michael and I had appeared.
I had spent several months nursing Michael at home after my brief stint in Chocolat, which was my longest time off work since giving birth to Finty, and it was Michael who had urged me to go back to work after she was born. After he died, I felt that he was again influencing me to pick up the strands of my career. During that long break my agent had refused to commit to any offers, and there were only three films that I was at all keen to do – The Shipping News, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Iris.
Tor had kept them all on hold, but about a month after Michael died she rang me to say that by some miracle of scheduling it looked as if I could just manage to do all three, though the timing would be very tight. There was only a day between finishing one and starting the next, and at one point I was alternating between the shooting of two of them. The fact that the powerful American film producer Harvey Weinstein was involved in the production of all of them obviously helped to synchronise the schedules.
Some people may have thought that I was running away from the fact of Michael dying, but then I had a lot of letters telling me, ‘Do work, it’s the best thing,’ from people who had shared my experience. It certainly left me no time to dwell on things. There were two separate periods of filming in Canada, and in the five-week gap I filmed Iris. As soon as we had finished the second lot of filming on The Shipping News I flew back and went straight to West Wycombe, to start shooting on The Importance of Being Earnest. I naturally began this marathon in a rather fragile state, and when Lasse said to me on arrival, ‘I can’t imagine what you must be going through, it must be ghastly for you,’ I completely went to pieces. But then I pulled myself together, and I was fine after that.
The first thing I did in Nova Scotia was to work with a voice coach, because the Newfoundland accent was very, very difficult. The good thing was that some of the crew were from Newfoundland, and they told me whenever I got anything wrong. So I was not best pleased when one film critic said that my accent was simply appalling. I long to meet Andrew O’Hagan to ask him how long he was in Newfoundland, and how well he knows it, because I was actually pulled up on every word if it was not right.
Kevin Spacey was cast as my nephew, and we had met during my time on Broadway when he was playing the lead in The Iceman Cometh. I had got him to deliver the black glove to Tim Pigott-Smith onstage with President Clinton in the audience, so he already knew all about that game. Tim airmailed the glove to Kevin, and got him to return the compliment on camera. He chose the moment of maximum embarrassment. Agnis Hamm hated her late brother, so she dumped his ashes in an outhouse and peed on them. Naturally this shot was being delicately filmed, until Kevin reached in from below with the glove on a long stick and tickled my bottom with it. I leapt into the air screaming, and it was some while before we could complete the scene.
Kevin was terrific in the film. He is a big joker and a brilliant mimic, he has a good ear for other actors’ voices. When we were on the Parkinson show together later, he did a wicked impersonation of Ian McKellen. He made me laugh incredibly from the very first day. He is a remarkable actor, and we just had a marvellously funny time. There was a running joke in Newfoundland that everybody but me kept seeing the whales offshore, and I was dying to see them. Kevin and I were in the middle of shooting a scene facing each other, and there was a low window behind me. I had to say my line and then turn and walk away. Just at that moment I heard somebody shout, ‘A whale,’ and I ducked down to peer out of the window. He never let me forget that impulse – in the middle of a scene! Well, it wasn’t quite right, was it?
During the second period of shooting we had a three-day break one weekend when we were at Port Rex, and Kevin said, ‘Why don’t you come to New York?’ I had to have a photograph taken for a magazine, and they were coming up to the location, so I rang them in New York and suggested I went to them instead. All the crew who were going home went to St John’s airport, where it had been foggy for three days. When the fog lifted, which it finally did that morning, there were four hundred moose all over the airfield. They fired shots in the air, they tried everything, but nothing would move the moose, so none of the crew got away, they spent the entire weekend at St John’s.
Luckily, we had gone to Gander Airport, where the five of us flew to New York: Lasse, Julianne Moore, Kevin, his make-up artist Tania, and myself. We had the most incredibly enjoyable weekend, we saw The Producers and Proof on Broadway, and I learnt to ride a motor-scooter. Kevin was staying at the Trump Tower, and my hotel, the St Regis, was just round the corner. I went to see him one morning and he said, ‘Right, we’ve got to have a rehearsal.’ So we had a rehearsal on this Zappy power-assisted scooter, and I drove straight down a corridor into a lady carrying a great pile of sheets and towels. Kevin said, ‘This is no good, we’ll take it down to the park.’ So off we went to Central Park. I su
ddenly got the hang of it and raced off to Central Park West; it was absolutely thrilling. Luckily there were no paparazzi around in the park, or I shudder to think what the headline would have been. Then we had to go back to start work again, but it was a wonderful break.
Since he took over as Director of the Old Vic, Kevin has tried several times to get me to join his company, and I would have loved to, but we haven’t been able to get the dates to work yet. I still want to go back there, I think it is just admirable the way he has stuck at it, even though he has been given a really rough time by the London critics. It is our gain that he is running the Vic, and I hope everybody realises it soon, because he really loves that theatre, he cares for it, and wants to make it a real success.
I was grateful that they split my filming schedule on The Shipping News to allow me to play Iris Murdoch in between, but it was occasionally difficult to concentrate totally on the character I was playing. I emailed Kevin when I came back the first time, and wailed, ‘I don’t know whether I am Agnis Murdoch or Iris Hamm, I don’t know who I am!’
Fortunately I had Richard Eyre and Jim Broadbent to keep me on the right track. Both their mothers had died of Alzheimer’s, so I was always able to check with them on how they behaved in those last months. Iris Murdoch was my heroine anyway, because I had read all her books, and I watched television interviews with her. Kate Winslet was playing the young Iris, and she watched the same interviews, which was terribly helpful to both of us. But it was hard to make, because of the number of people who knew her and were friends of hers, and she had died so comparatively recently. It had been a bit easier with Queen Victoria, and even easier with Elizabeth I.