{"id":659491,"date":"2026-10-28T10:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T10:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659491\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T10:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T10:46:10","slug":"is-it-too-late-to-make-a-run-for-it-by-judi-dench-review-whatever-you-do-dont-call-her-a-national-treasure-biography-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659491\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench review \u2013 whatever you do, don\u2019t call her a \u2018national treasure\u2019 | Biography books"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late 1950s, Judi Dench<\/a> was\u00a0invited to meet a major Hollywood producer about a possible career in the film business. The producer looked at her for a long time and said: \u201cVery nice to meet you but you\u2019ll never make a movie because you have every single thing wrong with your face.\u201d As she left his office, Dench \u2013 who was 23 and about to make her professional debut as Ophelia in Hamlet at the Old Vic \u2013 breathed a sigh of relief and resolved to concentrate on theatre. Though she dabbled in film and TV, it wasn\u2019t until the 1990s that she became a bona fide movie star, playing M in the Bond films and winning an Oscar for her portrayal of\u00a0Elizabeth I in\u00a0Shakespeare in Love. Yet, she notes: \u201cBeing onstage is where I feel safest. Yes, I\u2019ve appeared in films, but I\u2019d never\u00a0consider myself a\u00a0film actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dench\u2019s reflections on her working life form the backbone of Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, a memoir built around her conversations with the actor and theatre director Brendan O\u2019Hea, Dench\u2019s friend with whom she\u00a0also collaborated on 2023\u2019s Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. This book confirms much of what is already known about Dench: that she is impishly funny, swears like\u00a0a sailor, and that, despite that film\u00a0producer\u2019s unkind comments, she\u00a0has \u201cno hang-ups about what I look like on camera \u2026 Acting for me is\u00a0not about looking glamorous. It\u2019s\u00a0whatever\u2019s needed for the story.\u201d We also learn that Dench, who is 91, can\u2019t resist a prank: while playing Brecht\u2019s Mother Courage at the Barbican in London, she replaced the\u00a0drinks her character serves to two\u00a0soldiers with cider vinegar \u2013 \u201cIt\u00a0was a joy watching them knock it\u00a0back, made even more glorious by the fact they had to ask for a top-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In keeping with her previous book, this one is delivered in a question-and\u2011answer format. The chapters are thematic and cover faith, animals, directors and directing, comedy, choosing a part, which means the chronology is all over\u00a0the place. While the book starts quite reasonably with Dench\u2019s early life in York as the daughter of a GP, it\u00a0ends, oddly, with a chapter called Starting Out, in which we learn what she did after her A-levels. And while she has an easy chemistry with O\u2019Hea, there are times when his line of questioning gets tediously granular, as in: \u201cWhat\u2019s\u00a0your favourite dressing room?\u201d Such are the perils of having an actor interview an actor.<\/p>\n

But despite the shoptalk and the haphazard structure, there are enough witty anecdotes and oddball facts to keep it clipping along. We learn that Dench has a waste-collection truck named after her: \u201cDame Foodie Dench\u201d; that she had a cat called Bernard the Duck Fucker (though O\u2019Hea neglects to ask how he earned his name); and that, on the opening night of Madame de Sade, Dench\u2019s co-star Frances Barber gave her a double-ended, bendy dildo which she wore as a scarf when the company gathered for director\u2019s notes. Elsewhere, Dench pays touching tribute to departed friends including the late Maggie Smith, whom she says\u00a0was \u201ca very complex person \u2013 intensely private, and I suspect quite lonely at times; she\u2019d occasionally erect an electric fence around herself\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whole project is kept afloat by\u00a0Dench\u2019s rare humour and warmth\u00a0which long ago elevated her\u00a0to\u00a0national treasure status (an appellation she loathes as it makes her\u00a0sound \u201clike a dusty old relic\u201d). Her\u00a0eyesight is now poor, but her memories are pin-sharp, relayed through a prism of amused self-deprecation and passion for her job. The book\u2019s title references Dench\u2019s professional nerves, which lead her to\u00a0keep her bag by the rehearsal room door in case she is compelled to do a\u00a0runner. Learning lines may have become more difficult, but she has no intention of stopping work. \u201cTake the keys out of the ignition and the car will\u00a0conk out,\u201d she cautions. \u201cDon\u2019t retire, do not go gentle, and don\u2019t even\u00a0think about going quietly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench is published by Michael Joseph (\u00a325). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the late 1950s, Judi Dench was\u00a0invited to meet a major Hollywood producer about a possible career in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-659491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}