An industrial estate in unromantic North Acton -- an epty room pressed into use for rehearsal. Under a duvet, on a bed no-one's using at the moment, lies one of the latest Dames of the British Empire. Judi Dench, quietly taking advantaage of a pause in the rehearsal of Behaving Badly, has the knack of seeming perfectly at home in any surroundings.
Behaving Badly? Judi Dench? Surely someone must have got the title or casting of C4's new drama series on Monday evenings (repeated Saturdays) all wrong. Judi Dench is Britain's favourite actress. Not only do television viewers adore her, she's also won a place in the hearts of most critics.
She's the confused heroine of A Fine Romance, and a classical actress of national acclaim. And back at home she's got an 18-year-old marriage, a 16-year oldl daughter, Finty, and the proverbial lovely house.
Bridget, the character she plays in Behaving Badly, had the marriage, the daughter and the lovely home, too. But five years before the story begins her husband left her for a younger woman, and she had to move into a smaller flat.
It's quite a nice flat, of course. And with a good divorce settlement, pottery classes on a Friday and Italian ones on a Tuesday, Bridget's life is not so terrible. But one day she decides she doesn't like it and stops being 'perfectly splendid' to everyone. In fact, she makes up her mind to start behaving badly.
That's where the surprise comes in. Because if Judi Dench's triumphal progress is marred by any small question mark, it is this: why must her loving public always think of her as cosy, comfortable, law abiding and safe?
It may be something to do with her tiny height (five foot one and a half) and sturdy figure, that appealing squeak in her voice and wide eyes in a kitten's face. It's certainly something to do with her famously happy home life. She even likes to act with her husband, Michael Williams -- what could be cosier than that? But it's surely nothing to do with the parts she has played. In the course of her career, the 54-year-old doctor's daughter from York has played -- among many other roles -- Joan of Arc and Lady Macbeth, Lady Bracknell and Cabaret's Sally Bowles.
Last year was a memorable one for Dame Judi, even after the gift in the New Year Honours list. She won the Laurence Olivier award for best actress (along with awards from the Evening Standard, Plays and Players and Drama magazine), for her Shakespearian performance in Antony and Cleopatra. Just think of the role she won them for. There are a lot of words you could use to describe the serpent of the Nile, but cosy isn't one of them.
Shakespeare and his works have been looming large on her horizons lately. On a March morning she collected her honour from Buckingham Palace, then she travelled north for the opening of Much Ado about Nothing. She made her debut as a director in the play, for the theatre company, Renaissance, launced by Kenneth Branagh. Last autumn, that young Turk of the British stage struck out into the big screen with his own production of Henry V. The cast reads like a roll of honour -- Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, Brian Blessed and Emma Thompson. And some of the best scenes in the film show Judi as Mistress Quickly the tavern keeper -- tough, dirty, and bedraggled beyond belief.
For most of 1989 she is back on stage, doing Halmet at the National Theatre. 'Finty has her GCSEs coming up,' she explains, ' so I need to be around.' Though Finty looks set to follow her parents into 'the business', Judi and Michael have always insisted she get her exams first, 'just as our parents told us to do. Plays come and plays go,' says Judi, 'but children go through a stage of life once, and that will never come again.'
Nothing is more important to Dame Judi than her family and homne. The Williams' house, 18th century, elegantly smalll, enchantingly pretty, is tucked, unexpectedly enough, behind a London graveyard.
The family shares its dwelling with Mr. Henry, an adored shih tzu dog, a cat, some rabbits (the hamster escaped), and two donkeys. To accommodate the menagerie the Williamses have another house on the Sussex/Suyrrey border. But although Judi is too nice ever to refuse journalists the homely details, the truth is she is tired of interviews about domesticity and pets.
Despite the aura of warmth and camaraderie that surrounds her, Judi Dench as a private identity that remains just that. 'My most private fears and happinesses are in a compartment that's all my own,' she says. 'And the real person everyone writes about has nothing to do with my job.' Noth that the real person is as uncomplicasted as everyone makes out.
'There is something of every part you play within you. A whole kaleidoscope -- so why do people just take the colour on top and label it cosy, or homely? There are fierce emotions underneath -- the things you portray on stage.'
Dame Judi has a lot of symspathy with Bridget in Behaving Badly. 'She's no victim. In one way she's the parent that I want to be -- the kind who isn't afraid to chqange. The kinid of person who has learned to live with doubt...
'Each part I play presents a different challeng, and I seem to have difficulty with each one. I used to think the part would come that I didn't find hard. I don't think that will happen now.'
The actress who has conquereed the most difficult roles in the book admits to still feeling 'deeply, deeply insecture'. To fearing, even that the supply of work will dry up. But if Dame Judi Dench continues to surprise herself, at least she surprises the rest of the world, too.
One of the biggest surprises went to the critic who, back in 1957, wrote that the young Judi Dench as Ophelia ' stepped out into the limelight, tripped over her advance publicity and fell flat on her pretty face'. He advised a few years of hard labour in decent obscurity. A quarter of a centrury later he ate his words, without salt, in print and in person. Judi Dench took it graciously. It had been good advice, she said. Cosy she isn't -- but kindly? Well, that's something else.
This article appeared in the TV Times(UK) in the February 18-24, 1989 edition.