Judi Dench Quotes

I don`t like reading scripts very much. I like it better for someone to just explain to me what it is about this story.

I have no control over a film. I don`t know what will be left on the cutting floor.

It actually was a complete departure having a woman playing M. I didn`t realize at the time that it would be so noticed.

The Lord Chamberlin was censoring scripts when I first came into the theater.

I would like to work with Jack Nicholson, before it`s too late.

I hate how people have been attacking Daniel Craig. It`s despicable and it disgusts me. I have filmed with him in Prague and the Bahamas and he is a fine actor. He brings something new and edgy to the role. His critics will be proved wrong.

I trained as a designer, so I`m always terribly keen about what I`m going to look like.

Seriously, though, I think I never ceased to be grateful of the fact that I am able to do a job that I really love - I never got over that.

I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That`s why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I`m not going to be cast again.

I don`t think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

In contrast, the control you have in a theatre is very attractive to me.

And then it was working with Bob Hoskins, who I had never worked with before - except radio. It was like being given a wonderful meal - full of the things you love most.

It was good to learn so early. They`re not going to be kind to you. You have to do it and get on, and then gulp down and get better.

I think you`ve got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.

Michael died five years ago this January, and the first thing that really struck me about the script was the part about her peeling off from the funeral and just getting into a rowboat and having a real kind of cry where nobody was.

I`ve figured out what to do so far, but it`s always the next thing you come to where the man with the bucket of ice cold water is waiting - whoosh! in your face. That`s why you work with directors who know what to tell you to do.

The more I do, the more frightened I get. But that is essential. Otherwise why would I go on doing it?

The theater is the thing I love doing most.

And then it was working with Bob Hoskins, who I had never worked with before - except radio. It was like being given a wonderful meal - full of the things you love most.

I don`t think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself - that is the best combination.

Since Michael died I think I`ve worked constantly. Friends and colleagues are very sustaining. They`re the people who get you through it... It`s no good to be on your own.

People think you know beforehand when you win an Oscar - I can assure you you don`t.

(From 1994 interview when asked the reasons for the success of A Room with a View (1985)) "I`ve never seen it, so I don`t know. Florence was lovely of course, and it`s a wonderful love story. I did enjoy doing the part, because Maggie Smith and I were old friends from 1958. We both arrived in Florence on the same day and neither of us had any family with us, so we would spend all day together filming and then go out to dinner together, catching up on our Old Vic days. But, I didn`t enjoy working with James Ivory. I didn`t feel that I was on his wavelength and I didn`t feel that he wanted me in the film, I have to say that. I remember doing that scene in the middle of the square where she goes mad and attacks the man selling postcards; James went to see the rushes and told me afterwards that everyone had laughed at it, they`d thought it was very funny. `Well done`, he said to me. I thought perhaps we`d turned the corner but, when I came to post-sync the film, that scene was missing. When I asked why, he told me that Helena Bonham Carter hadn`t been feeling up to it that day, so he`d cut the whole sequence. I don`t know if that was the real reason he cut it - I just don`t know".

It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven`t done.

Because, you know, I can`t work a bicycle pump.

I love being part of a company, and telling a story.

My only regret is that I didn`t have more children.

It`s incredibly moving to hear some of our greatest actors performing Shakespeare.

I am so thrilled to be nominated for something I loved working on every single day.

The thing about not reading scripts and my wanting a director to tell me a story is a risk I need to take. I need that real fear.

On her long marriage to Michael Williams, she said "We were just happy to be in the same room together".

Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it`s up to you to put in the amount. It`s up to the director to nag you until you get it right.

My husband was actually very keen that I would become a Bond girl.

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it`s like a template; I`ll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I`m all right.

It is not good to cross the bridge before you get to it.

I was in Yorkshire. We were a family of five and I used to be sent sometimes to get the rations for the week and I was easily able to carry them back. It was like one egg and a tiny bit of tea.

The best moment of playing (Shakespeare`s) Juliet is the nanosecond when they offer you the part.

Sometimes nudity is gratuitous. We just live in a society where everything goes.