Judi Dench Quotes & Sayings

#1. The theater is the thing I love doing most.

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

#3. I'm always fearful. ... Fear generates in you a huge energy. You can use it. When I feel that mounting fear, I think, 'Oh, yes, there it is!' It's like petrol.

Judi Dench

#4. 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.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#6. 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.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#8. I felt quite a responsibility when I played Elizabeth I but nobody here remembers her! And then I felt a responsibility when I played Queen Victoria but not many people remember her.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#10. I have a completely new knee. It's brilliant. I am not feeling my age at all. I feel about 43, a willowy blonde 43 years old with long legs.

Judi Dench

#11. 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.

Judi Dench

#12. I can't read scripts any more because of the trouble with my eyes.

Judi Dench

#13. The need for a global structure of control in the form of a world environment court is now more urgent than ever before.

Judi Dench

#14. There are very few things that surprise me.

Judi Dench

#15. The difficulty with any sort of esteem is that more is expected of you.

Judi Dench

#16. I'm very conscious that I'm in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it - how incredibly lucky.

Judi Dench

#17. It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.

Judi Dench

#18. Because, you know, I can't work a bicycle pump.

Judi Dench

#19. People think you know beforehand when you win an Oscar - I can assure you you don't.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#21. Every experience that you experience yourself you use, because that's our craft.

Judi Dench

#22. 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.

Judi Dench

#23. I've always loved painting, although I never show anyone what I've done. Mainly because I don't do it well. But it's like a form of visual diary for me. A way of fixing things in my mind.

Judi Dench

#24. Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.

Judi Dench

#25. I need to learn every day.

Judi Dench

#26. Most things don't work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff.

Judi Dench

#27. We know about the issue of children being sold and adopted and taken away but what is so extraordinary is how these two people come through something like - how both of them do, in actual fact. I think that she's one of the most considerable people I've ever met, Philomena.

Judi Dench

#28. I played Iris Murdoch, who had not long died, and I felt the responsibility very heavy on my shoulders.

Judi Dench

#29. In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.

Judi Dench

#30. 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.

Judi Dench

#31. Actually, what I miss are people corpsing on stage.

Judi Dench

#32. I'd rather do a part because I want to, not because great things are expected of me.

Judi Dench

#33. I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story ... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

Judi Dench

#34. Work certainly does help fill a void.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#36. 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.

Judi Dench

#37. I started off as a theatre designer, and by some extraordinary circumstance I saw something in Stratford-upon-Avon, and realized that that's the kind of design I want, but also that that's the kind of designer I'll never be.

Judi Dench

#38. It actually was a complete departure having a woman playing M. I didn't realize at the time that it would be so noticed.

Judi Dench

#39. It's incredibly moving to hear some of our greatest actors performing Shakespeare.

Judi Dench

#40. There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it.

Judi Dench

#41. Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.

Judi Dench

#42. I wanted to be a set designer when I was young.

Judi Dench

#43. I don't really want to retire. I intend to go on working as long as I can because I still have a huge amount of energy.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#45. I would hate people to think bossy is all I can do.

Judi Dench

#46. I like to push myself beyond the limit every now and again.

Judi Dench

#47. When we are together, there is nothing we cannot achieve', which is something Michael used to say.

Judi Dench

#48. 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.

Judi Dench

#49. One of the benefits of being a mature well-educated woman is that you're not afraid of expletives. And you have no fear to put a fool in his place. That's the power of language and experience. You can learn a lot from Shakespeare.

Judi Dench

#50. 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.

Judi Dench

#51. I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

Judi Dench

#52. 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.

Judi Dench

#53. 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.

Judi Dench

#54. Frankly, I never had any intense desire to go to India. I know that sounds a bit strange, but it just never was someplace I had a burning desire to visit.

Judi Dench

#55. This is just the loveliest news. I'm so happy for everybody involved, and so proud to have been part of the wonderful experience that Philomena has been.

Judi Dench

#56. 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.

Judi Dench

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

Judi Dench

#58. Filming is completely - was totally new to me ... I had a movie career which wasn't supposed to be, so I couldn't be more thrilled. For those who work, parts seem to get more interesting.

Judi Dench

#59. Anything that we can do to improve the lives of elderly people is welcome so far as I am concerned.

Judi Dench

#60. I get sillier as I get older, so I don't know what wisdom means. I can only pass on something that I've been acquainted with and let whomever it is pick the bones out of it

Judi Dench

#61. It takes courage to recognize the real as opposed to the convenient.

Judi Dench

#62. Don't think I am going to let Bob Hoskins take all his clothes off and me not take a look? I just had a quick look up and down, like you would.

Judi Dench

#63. I don't think that care homes are all rotten old places that ought to be shut down.

Judi Dench

#64. Everything, every part that you approach has to be somehow rooted in yourself. You have to somehow root everything so that it's not just words coming out of you.

Judi Dench

#65. 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.

Judi Dench