Maggie Smith is staring at my tape recorder with a look of concern.
"The light's not on," she says.
The voice-activated machine, for some reason, has deactivated.
Judi Dench, sitting next to her, looks on, both sympathetic and amused.
"It's very, very tired," Dench says at another point, as Charles Dance, their director, suddenly darts into and out of the living room of the hotel suite. I shake the recorder vigorously, demanding its return to duty.
The device complies, stops, sputters to life in brief spurts. Smith is now laughing a throaty Maggie Smith laugh, which starts Dench, an inveterate giggler, to chortling as well.
"It's exhausted," Smith tsk-tsks, seeming to enjoy herself enormously.
The actor's nightmare is bursting onstage and not remembering the words. A reporter's version is sitting for an important interview and not being able to record it. The latter seems to be my fate on this wet afternoon in Lower Manhattan, where I am to sit for a promised hour -- this usually translates, on a publicist's clock, to 43 minutes -- with two of the finest actresses alive. Smith and Dench are the stars of "Ladies in Lavender," a small-budget period movie, set in Cornwall on the English coast, about a pair of aged sisters and the young foreigner who washes up, literally, on their doorstep.
Though the film, which opens in Washington tomorrow, was shot two years ago, it's only now being released in this country, and the actresses are seated side by side on a couch to talk about making it. The atmosphere in the suite is jolly. Dench, in light-colored jacket and pants, and Smith, in a dark ensemble of similar style, are unfailingly charming. And they're ready to be entertained. (Jet-lagged, they have been talking to reporters all day.) Smith has the disarming habit of collapsing into Dench's arms whenever she's in stitches. In our encounter, this happens often.
They've known each other forever, these remarkable women, and although the auras they project on stage and screen, as well as the kinds of roles they play, are vastly different, they've lived parallel lives in important ways. Born 19 days apart in December 1934 -- both are 70 -- they live about 40 minutes from each other in southern England. Both are widowed and have children in the acting trade: Dench's daughter, Finty Williams, in fact, plays her younger self in "Ladies in Lavender."
Both belong to a generation of British classical actors who contributed to a golden age of London theater from the 1960s through the 1980s, at burgeoning institutions such as the National Theatre (now the Royal National) and the Royal Shakespeare Company. And both are among an elite group of British stage stars who've broken through in movies and earned Oscars for their efforts. (Dench has one statuette, for "Shakespeare in Love." Smith owns two, for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "California Suite.")
They first worked together in the late 1950s when they were cast in a production of "As You Like It." Smith played Celia, the second lead, while Dench was Phebe, one of those lower-tier Shakespearean bumpkins. Each went on to do stellar and varied stage work: Smith's credits range from Desdemona in "Othello," with Laurence Olivier, to the hugely popular comedy "Lettice and Lovage" in both London and New York, and Dench's include "Macbeth," with Ian McKellen, and the London production of "Cabaret," in which she played Sally Bowles.
In the past few years, they've performed in several projects together, among them Franco Zeffirelli's "Tea With Mussolini" and David Hare's play "Breath of Life." But before their joint appearance in "A Room With a View" in 1985, they hadn't seen much of each other in some time.
"We were doing lots of other things," Dench says perkily.
"Lots of other things," Smith echoes.
"Maggie was getting married, I was getting married," Dench continues. "It wasn't really until 'Room With a View' that we suddenly found ourselves flying to Italy on the same plane."
The conversation turns to "Ladies in Lavender," which Dance wrote and directed. Set in 1936, the movie is a portrait of the sisters' emotional lives and an unraveling of the mystery of the young man they nurse back to health. Shot in the space of a month, it was apparently a pleasure to make.
"I didn't have to do much directing, anyway," says Dance, himself an actor of note. "I think there were two occasions when I was so bold as to suggest a slightly different turn or a move at a particular time. The joy of having people like this is that they don't arrive with an entourage and they come onto the set and do the job better than anybody else."
Since the distraction of the recording device has unnerved me, it only makes sense that I should unnerve everybody else with an observation about the film. I innocently suggest that in the first few minutes of "Ladies in Lavender," before we know they are sisters, the nature of the relationship between Dench's character and Smith's remains vague, and that "lavender" is a color suggestive of a certain type of love.
At the outset, the actresses are seen walking together on a beach. "The first scene," I point out, "ends with the two of you going up the stairs to bed."
The women stare back at me incredulously.
"Oh, please!" Dench declares. "You're filthy-minded!"
Smith chimes in, in her best Miss Jean Brodie voice: "You've got a dirty, filthy mind!"
A publicist, sitting with another publicist at a table in the room, cheerfully interjects that there is a magazine in Minnesota called Lavender, devoted to gay and lesbian issues.
"I tried to change the title," Dance says.
"Yes, you were told!" Smith says.
"No, Charlie!" Dench says.
That, anyway, is what my tape recorder claims was spoken. In an effort to steer the discussion in some direction, I ask, "Is it because of English lavender in the countryside?"
Smith replies, "It means ladies who are slightly past it."
Ah. I try, once more, to excuse my initial minutes of misapprehension about the film.
"I think it's the way your mind works!" Smith says. "What a squalid -- "
Later, Dance takes umbrage at the suggestion that the character Dench plays is neurotic -- she falls in love with the 23-year-old stranger -- and then there is some talk about the lovely catering for the movie, and time's up. I'm a bit lightheaded. I thank the actresses and shake the recorder one last time.
Smith nods at the machine. "I hope that works," she says.
Thanks to Anca for sending this article, which appeared in the Washington Post on May 26, 2005. The photo was taken by Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post.