Dame Judi Dench opens up on her declining eyesight, family history, and having a temper: "Oh yes, I’m sometimes very cross"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

The snow is falling sluggishly, barely settling, as we drive down ever-more-winding country lanes and draw up to Dame Judi Dench’s fairy-tale cottage, with its heavy wooden door. It emerges beyond a barn and outbuildings, a lake, swimming pool and six acres of her beloved woodland in which, each time a dear friend dies (and there are a lot of them by now), a tree is planted with their name attached: recent additions being Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg.

The grounds are tended by a friendly young man (the son of one of the longstanding group of women who help the actor), dressed in tweeds, a bounding dog at his side. Dench would doubtless demur at "grounds" – being the least given to airs and graces of any interviewee of her stature. Last time we met, in 2017, she told me how much she loathes being called an "icon" and actively despises "national treasure", relishing Tracey Ullman’s hilarious portrayal of her (available to watch on YouTube) as a swearing, boozing, shoplifting, dog-poo-throwing tearaway hiding behind her revered status.

Outside is perishing, but inside all is warmth and good cheer. Indeed, it feels Christmassy, down to the glass of champagne from which Dench takes the occasional sip.

Age has not withered her. Jude – as she is known to her friends – is so warm and fun (God, is she fun! And so game!), as well as funny, making spontaneous quips that reveal a still-lively mind even if she worries about losing her marbles. But on 9 December she turns 91 and the passing of time has had an impact. Her bright blue eyes, which can turn to steel when playing a part like M in the Bond films, no longer see.

Her sight has been declining for some years, due to age-related macular degeneration. When I ask whether she can see my face – we are seated very close to one another, she at the head of her kitchen table – peering intently, she says, "You’re in a fog."

She suffers from both eyes being "wet", the worst condition, and so there’s nothing to be done. "It’s a crusher," she says, her voice low. It was a blow to her independence when she could no longer drive, and then having to give up embroidering (swear words on dainty cushions; the soft furnishing equivalent of the Ullman skits), reading and watching television. Is there anything she particularly misses? "Well, I miss seeing Clive Myrie doing Mastermind, but I can hear the questions." So you still have the TV on, but just for listening?

"Yes, that’s what it is now."

She gets her temper, she says – wait, what? Dame Judi Dench has a temper? "Oh yes, I’m sometimes very cross" – from her red-haired Irish mother. (Her doctor father, Reginald Arthur, was English but grew up in Dublin, where he met Eleanor Olive Jones, who became his wife.) Dench breaks into a strong Irish accent as she recalls one of her mother’s "fiery" outbursts: "Daddy had bought her an Electrolux to replace her old Hoover. It arrived and she was standing at the top of the stairs – we had a long, long, long staircase going down to our front door – and she shouted, ‘Will ya give me back me old Hoover!’, and then she threw the Electrolux down the stairs! She had a furious temper."

In her documentary, Judi Dench: Shakespeare, My Family and Me, which we are here to discuss, every so often she says she hopes she’s not going to lose the plot. Does she worry a lot about that? "Oh yes, and I do now."

She feels lucky to still be able to remember great reams of Shakespeare, which she has been performing her whole life; even as a child it was the practice of her family to learn his words. "But I can’t remember what I’m doing tomorrow, I swear to you – just ask them," she points to the assistants who are lined up at the other end of the kitchen so as not to disturb us, but on hand to help if need be, which does occur. "It can be true, yes," they say as one, like a Greek chorus.

The documentary has been made at the behest of director Harvey Lilley who – among other projects – helmed her episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in 2021, when her Danish connection first came to light and took her into the orbit of Shakespeare, who is her hero for life.

In that programme, it transpired that Dench’s ten-times-great-aunt was a lady-in-waiting in the Danish king’s court at Kronborg Castle in Denmark, which inspired Elsinore, Shakespeare’s setting for Hamlet. But it was her eight- times-great-grandfather, Anders Bille – who came to England as part of the royal entourage in 1606 – on whom the new documentary turns, with its key question: could Dench’s ancestor have actually met, or at the very least brushed shoulders with, William Shakespeare on that visit, given the playwright himself was an important member of the court of James I?

If at times the thread of the conceit seems in danger of snapping in its tenuousness, the great charm of its protagonist – her lovely face as the words she has said since she was a young girl flow unbidden from her, in this or that grand historic hall – prevails and you’re left feeling terribly moved, grateful, even.

It’s the long decades of familiarity with the words, elucidating as they do all there is to know about the human condition, that bind her to her childhood, her family, her whole big career and the love of her life, Michael Williams, her late husband – and father of her daughter Finty (born Tara Cressida), also an actor – who died of lung cancer at 65, in 2001.

Judi and Michael met in the 60s, when they were both with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and married in 1971. There are paintings and photographs of him in prominent positions in every room. He is staring at me now from the counter on the other side of the kitchen – a particularly golden, luminous blown-up photograph of him looking lovingly at the camera, which makes your heart skip a beat. I ask whether it’s at times like Christmas that she particularly misses Michael. "No," she says. "All the time."

If you met Shakespeare now, what would you ask him? "Are you writing another play? Is there a part for me in it? Some old bird sitting in the corner with a nice speech at some point, not too much. And could she drop off during the play?"

Dench has been a Quaker since boarding as a teenager at The Mount, a Quaker independent secondary school in York. After attending the meetings, she discovered that they were meaningful for her and has remained a Quaker ever since. Is her faith a source of strength and consolation? "Certainly." But friendship is more than important to her: "It’s absolutely vital. That’s what the Quakers are called – the Society of Friends."

One such dear pal is Pierce Brosnan, about whom a story comes up on the back of me asking if she has an interest in who the new Bond might be (answer: not really). Her old 007 mucker came for lunch and she’d completely forgotten the doormat because it’s been there for so long: "The door was open, he looked down and there on the mat are the words, ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Mr Bond’." Was he tickled? "Oh, yes."

Forgiveness is a central tenet of the Quaker belief system – that everyone, regardless of the crime, deserves a second chance, and that through compassion and empathy a person can change and is worthy of care, regardless of the outcome. I start to recite some lines that come into my head: "Love is not love…" and she joins in – "Which alters when it alteration finds / Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark."

Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey were very good friends to her – the latter was a great comfort when her husband died, the former made her career in Hollywood. She was quick to condemn the predatory sexual behaviour of the producer when it first came out. I wonder how she feels now. Can she forgive both men? What sort of accommodation do you make when a friend has erred so egregiously? Is every good deed or accomplishment erased for ever? Can they be more than the worst thing they have ever done, even if it was persistent behaviour? Will there be a Weinstein tree in her woods when he dies?

At this point, the Greek chorus has broken into a Mexican wave of alarm, but I press on because she has spoken about this to Radio Times before and time has elapsed – perhaps her views have changed?

She says: "Kevin has been exonerated and I hear from Kevin, we text. I saw a bit of film of Harvey walking with two sticks and you think, 'Well…' 'I knew Harvey and I knew him well and worked with him, and I had none of that experience – very fortunately for me,' she says, with empathy for his victims. 'I imagine he's done his time…' she pauses. 'I don't know, to me it's personal – forgiveness. I just think…' her voice trails away and we leave it at that.

The subject is clearly painful to her, so to lighten the tone I ask whether she has a celebrity crush. "Oh God! Well, I can't see anybody, can I?" OK, so in the past? "I don't know!" The Greek chorus coughs off-stage and looks over to something clearly significant on the wall.

"Oh," Dench clocks. "Are we talking about… Yes, I expect we are… Johnny Depp?"

Why?

"WHY? Pull yourself together!" She points to the wall. "Up there is a framed earring that he bit off my ear in Pirates of the Caribbean."

He bit off your ear?

"Well, of course, he had to. I had to sit in a carriage in Greenwich and they said, 'Johnny Depp will jump in through the window, give you a kiss and jump out.' He jumped in, but he didn't give me a kiss, he went for my ear and took my earring off with his teeth. And I said [disappointed voice], 'Is that it?' and that is actually kept in."

So, was that a bit of a moment for you?

"Well, of course Johnny Depp, he's…" she fans herself.

She’s looking forward to Christmas with her family – her daughter, Finty, her grandson Sammy and his girlfriend, Lizzie. They don’t watch TV except for the King’s speech.

"If you are lucky enough to be together with the family, round the table, then that’s what

I like best. A group of people talking, exchanging things and delighting in each other. There’s nothing better than that."

We talk about her rapping with Lethal Bizzle, dancing in lockdown with her grandson on TikTok, the tattoo she got at 80 on the inside of her wrist – carpe diem (which looks so cool with her silver rings on every finger). The same legend is framed on a wall, alongside another one: "I love you to the moon and back," a saying her family have for one another.

Oh, to be in her presence is such a tonic. She is so very present that it has the effect of making you feel more vividly alive. But does she fear death? "Oh, yeah!" she says almost enthusiastically, which makes us both laugh. "But he’s not coming in here now, is he?!"

"Aye, but to die, and go we know not where," I start, and she joins in and then we are reciting together the great speech from Measure for Measure: "To lie in cold obstruction and to rot / This sensible warm motion to become / A kneaded clod…"

Stop it, Judi! Is there any Shakespeare you don’t know? "It’s only because I’ve done the play twice." But they’re not even your lines! "He wrote about everything that we might fear or look forward to, or delight in, or love. You feel it. He wrote it."

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Shakespeare, My Family & Me will be available to watch on Channel 4.

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