Yes, Judi Dench is quite fond of chocolate.
''I do like it,'' the actress admits, adding, ''I don't eat it very much now -- disaster for me, for my thighs.''
The 66-year-old star of stage, TV and film fell in love with a particular toffee-like fruity confection she found at The Sweet Life in New York City recently. ''I got to know them very well, my goodness. My driver used to have those sweets all the time.''
As for the sweet film she stars in, Chocolat?
She hasn't seen it. ''I'm a bit squeamish about that.''
She's nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role as the cantankerous grandmother who renews her relationship with her grandson against her estranged daughter's wishes.
Academy Award night, she says, ''is a gas -- absolutely love it. You see a lot people you never see. I actually rubbed shoulders with Jack Nicholson! There's a lot of nudging going on.''
Dench has played Queen Victoria and won an Oscar for her work as Queen Elizabeth in 1998's Shakespeare in Love.
''People kept saying which queen are you going to play next? I got a lot of that.''
For now, she says, she's ''thrilled'' that Chocolat is up for best picture.
''Apparently people who have seen it say it has a happy feeling about it, and it was that way on the set. So it's getting its just 'desserts.' ''
But what about criticism that it's too lightweight to even be in the running against Gladiator, Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
''I've heard that.'' But she insists that not all films need to be heavy.
''It's a fairy tale. You have a bit of everything.''
She lives south of London and recently has spent most of her time at home. Her husband of 30 years, British Shakespearean actor Michael Williams, died in January after a long battle with lung cancer.
''I haven't been working for a long time,'' she says, ''but I'm going to work very, very hard now.''
She thinks it will help her get through the grieving. ''I'm certain he would want me to be doing it. The amount of pain you go through . . . now I think I can channel it into adrenaline.''
The much-sought-after actress soon will reunite with her Chocolat director Lasse Hallstrom for 2 weeks in Nova Scotia while they work on The Shipping News, based on E. Annie Proulx's best seller, in which she'll play Kevin Spacey's estranged aunt.
What's her character like?
''I'll tell you what it says in the script: I'm 'tall, rawboned and 60.' That's fine for me. I don't care what she does. I just want the part.''
Thanks to Paula Kochersperger for sending me this article which appeared in the USA Today on March 9, 2001.