9 times Judi Dench made us clutch our pearls reading her memoir
9 times Judi Dench made us clutch our pearls reading her memoir
Marina WattsTue, November 3, 2026 at 4:30 PM UTC
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Judi Dench at the BFI London Film Festival at Claridges Hotel in London in October 2013Credit: Tim P. Whitby/GettyKey Points -
Judi Dench’s memoir is packed with anecdotes that will make readers blush, laugh, and gasp — maybe all at once.
“Ask me what I did yesterday and I couldn’t tell you, but I can recount in vivid detail what I did over 80 years ago,” the Oscar winner said.
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? is available for purchase wherever books are sold.
Judi Dench has a lot to say.
The actress reflects on her decades-long career in her new memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, written as a long and captivating conversation with Brendan O’Hea.
Along with anecdotes about her time at the Old Vic and many film roles, Dench also serves as a raconteur extraordinaire with memories from childhood and moments between performing that are equal parts eyebrow-raising and hilarious, while also leaving readers wanting more.
“I’ve been amazed at how much I remember from my childhood,” Dench told PEOPLE in October ahead of the book’s release. “Ask me what I did yesterday and I couldn’t tell you, but I can recount in vivid detail what I did over 80 years ago — the holidays, the friendships and the mischief I got up to at school.”
“My God, I was a real tearaway — setting off fire extinguishers and tying my fellow classmates to their chairs. I’m surprised I wasn’t expelled,” she added.
Here are 9 times that we clutched our pearls reading Dench’s memoir.
Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I in ‘Shakespeare in Love’Credit: Miramax/Laurie SparhamShe once put a rat in her neighbor’s letterbox
“An old lady called Miss Lazenby lived in one of the cottages behind our house, and I once had to put a rat through her letterbox,” Dench tells O’Hea, adding the rat was dead and “nicely wrapped in newspaper.”
“I didn’t know it was a rat. My brothers just asked me to post it through her letterbox because Miss Lazenby wouldn’t give them their cricket ball back. Being their little sister I felt rather privileged to be doing something for the boys.”
Adds Dench, “The problem was, Miss Lazenby was a patient of my father’s. We had such a telling-off.”
Dench once spilled tomato juice all over Maggie Smith’s white coat
Smith and Dench were friends from the 1950s to Smith’s death in 2024. After Smith, whom she affectionately calls “Mags” left the Old Vic company, she came back to see Dench in a show. “She was standing in my dressing room after the show, wearing this most exquisite white coat, and don’t ask me why I did it, but I jumped on her back,” Dench admits.
“She must’ve turned to speak to someone, and her back presented itself to me, so I leapt on it.”
“And the tomato juice she was drinking went all down her front. Mags used to say, ‘Always buy two of everything. If you see a nice pair of shoes or trousers, always get a second pair,’ so I hope to God she had a spare coat,” she adds.
She had her wedding reception to Michael Williams at the London Zoo
After tying the knot at St Mary’s Church in Hampstead, Dench celebrated her marriage at the London Zoo.
“We held our wedding reception at London Zoo, which meant that all the children could have a piece of cake then visit the animals, instead of being bored by speeches,” recalls Dench of her 1971 nuptials to fellow Royal Shakespeare Company actor Michael Williams.
Dench is still bitter about her role in the Nativity play as a child
When asked about her school Nativity play, Dench still can’t believe she wasn’t cast as the Virgin Mary. “I was cast as a fairy and was so cross because even then, aged six, I knew it wasn’t a proper part – because there are no fairies in the Nativity story: angels, yes, but no f---ing fairies. I’d been shoehorned in,” she says.
“It still rankles, doesn’t it? Even after all these years. Who did play the Virgin Mary?” asks O’Hea.
“Angela Bedford, the dentist’s daughter, who always used to cry at parties; I’ve forgotten why – something to do with jelly. My friend David Rymer was playing a King and during the performance he dropped his frankincense on the baby’s head.”
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As for whether or not Dench asked Rymer to drop frankincense, Dench responds, “Well . . . Let’s just say he did it on my behalf because he knew I was furious. And I had every right to be, because the doll that was playing the part of Jesus belonged to me. And I thought, if I’m providing the bloody props I should be playing the bloody part.”
Judi Dench at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in November 2024Credit: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/GettyShe laughed so hard that she threw up during her first ever trip to the theater
The first show Dench ever saw was Cuckoo in the Nest at the York Theatre Royal. And it was memorable for reasons other than kicking off a lifelong love of theater.
“It was a Ben Travers farce and at one point a man in long johns jumped out of a blanket box at the end of a bed and made me laugh so much that I threw up and had to be taken home,” Dench says.
“I cried and cried because I wanted to know what happened to the man, and so we returned the next night to see the second half.”
Dench’s bad behavior while attending a Quaker school
Dench recalls being written up in school for bad behavior, which included talking out of turn and running down corridors. “There were quite a few rules and codes of behaviour which I chose to ignore,” she says.
“In those early years I just saw school as a tremendous gas. I remember getting my friend’s head stuck between two uprights of a bannister and they had to call the fire brigade. If we misbehaved, we weren’t scolded or caned, we were sent to the headmistress for a ‘medi’ – a meditation.”
Among her other pranks were making an “apple-pie bed” by folding the sheets a certain way. “I could make an apple-pie bed right now,” she declares. “There’s a real art to it – the way you fold the top sheet back on itself to form a pocket – so that the victim has no idea why they can’t extend their legs. Sometimes they even fall out of bed trying. Oh, it’s so irresistible.”
Apropos of nothing, Dench adds: “During my first year I was also caught secretly eating condensed milk out of the tin with my ruler.”
Judi Dench at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles in March 1999Credit: Bob Riha, Jr./GettyThe NSFW cushion she made for a friend
Everyone’s got a hobby, such as Dench’s cross-stitching, making “endless tapestries.” “When Mikey was alive he’d say, ‘My God, there isn’t a chair in the house that doesn’t have a piece of sewing on it.’ I found it therapeutic. And I used to make things to order.
“[Playwright] David Hare once asked me to make him a cushion with something rude written on it, so when his mother came to visit he could enjoy hearing her say, ‘What a charming cushion,’ because she wouldn’t be able to see the words embroidered across it. I remember doing that – it was very complicated – a swirl pattern. But if you studied it closely, it said, ‘F--- off.’”
She once got a crown filled in full 19th century costume
Dench once lost a crown while filming the BBC drama Cranford in the aughts and had to go to an emergency dentist. “There was no time to change out of my costume because they needed me back on set as quickly as possible.” she says.
“There I was, lying in the dentist’s chair dressed as Miss Matty – full nineteenth-century gear: the bonnet, the wig, the lot – and the dentist said, ‘So, are you busy working at the moment?’ I wanted to say, ‘No, I always go around looking like this.’”
‘Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?’ by Judi DenchCredit: St. Martin's PressShe drove without a license for a shocking number of years
At one point, Dench tells O’Hea that she drove cars without a proper licence [SIC] for an eyebrow-raising number of years. “You have broken the law, because you drove without a licence for many years,” O’Hea mentions, to which she responds. “I had a provisional licence.”
Nonetheless, she got pulled over once in Parliament Square, London, appeared at court, was fined 2 pounds for not having a licence, not having L-plates, and driving with a broken sidelight. “And then you drove for another ten years without a licence,” O’Hea urges.
“Don’t be ridiculous, it wasn’t ten. It was thirty. I was fifty when I passed my test,” Dench says. Despite O’Hea reminding her it’s illegal, she insisted that she’s “bloody well” a good driver.
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? is available for purchase wherever books are sold.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
