In Wartime London, one of the most popular–and profitable–escapes for the nervous population was the famous Windmill Theater, where impressario Vivian Van Damm’s non-stop entertainment revues drew SRO crowds, until copycat production began popping up. That’s when Van Damme’s unlikely partner Laura Henderson, an aristocratic widow in her 60s, pioneered a new twist, bringing nude women to the British stage and drawing the ire of the government as well as the cheers of the audience as the Blitz began.
So who better to bring the story of one British stage legend to life for the film Mrs. Henderson Presents than that equally iconic presence from the theater–not to mention an Academy Award-winning actress–Dame Judi Dench? Hollywood.com earned an audience with Dame Dench herself, just days before she earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the film. Don’t worry–we all kept our clothes on.
Hollywood.com: Did you know the historical back story about the real Laura Henderson and her unusual place in British theater?
Judi Dench: No, not at all. Nothing about her, I only knew about Vivian Van Damm and the Windmill, and the fact that it was amazingly daring. But I didn’t know about her at all. It was Bob [Hoskins], you probably heard, just telling me the story, really, because his friends found the programs–suddenly, instead of “Vivian Van Damm presents,” Mrs. Henderson Presents. And they went off on that, followed that path, and found about this woman. And it’s worth telling–very brave! Fantastically brave.
HW: Just how much further along are we, when it comes to onstage nudity. It’s still considered pretty risqué and controversial when, say, Nicole Kidman drops her clothes during a play.
JD: Well, the British, you know, are always a bit uptight about nudity. We haven’t got used to not having any clothes on, we haven’t. But I think this was such an extraordinary tale, and it was unknown since the Lord Chamberlain was censoring scripts, and when I came in to the theater in 1957, he was still there. And there were all sorts of things you weren’t allowed to do. Many, many things you weren’t allowed, he went through every single script. And he didn’t go till the ’60s, and then quite suddenly after he’d gone, and censorship finished, then everybody burst out with things like Hair and Oh, Calcutta! Everybody did everything.
HW: Are there still things that people are shocked that a person of a certain class would do?
JD: Yes, I’m sure of it. She’s not a conventional woman, not in any way. It’s the last thing, in a way, you’d expect this woman to do, really. She has a lot of money, she could live a very respectable and wealthy and cushy kind of life if she wanted, but she chooses not to do that–that’s not her bag. But I think she’s as cheeky when she walks into the Lord Chamberlain’s office, I think you know from the minute that she walks in to the office that he’s not got a chance. I think I looked at the script and I went, there’s not a chance for him, not a single chance. We had such a funny and lovely time doing it.
HW: Do you feel you can relate to Laura Henderson? Could you understand the feeling, emotion, with her husband dying?
JD: Perhaps–yes. I mean, you don’t draw parallels as it were with a script, but when it opens and her husband she says died, and then she goes and gets into the boat. I understand that. That wouldn’t be the way I would’ve done it, but you find a way of dealing with it, and I understood that’s the way that she dealt with it. So yes, you have to draw on what you’ve observed. I say to lots of young actors, when I’m speaking to them, what you have to have as an actor is another eye here, and another ear here. Lady Macbeth–I haven’t, fortunately, ever urged my husband to do away with his castle and stabbed him in the night, but nevertheless you have to somehow be able to either observe or remember. It’s like your mind has a quick snapshot. You have to get snapshots, and that is not to say that when you go through something or that you observe something, that you can kind of coldly observe it and take it, but you nevertheless have to feed it into the kind of computer that’s inside. Until you think, yes I can understand. It’s like the relationship between Bob and me: Bob and I have that relationship, but we had it the moment we met. So that was something we didn’t have to feed in. We had to feed it then through Vivian Van Damm and Mrs. Henderson. But you know, he’s a person I can spark off very easily, and he off me, and we get on very well.
HW: Is it true that earlier in your career you didn’t like making movies so much?
JD: No, I hated it. I was told I had not a single thing right with my face, and that was when I was a young girl at the Vic. But my passion is the theater. I know it’s not right, I know, to be sitting talking about a film, but it’s not the thing I’m happy in. Well, I like doing it now. And I’ve learned more about it. But I learn each time I do it, just by watching other people. I mean, Cate Blanchett in a film I’ve just done–Notes on a Scandal–I watched her and I kind of realized and saw very clearly that when they say less is more, she puts it to supreme use, that.
HW: Do you regret not having made more films when you were younger?
JD: Oh no, I don’t regret it in the slightest. I never expected to make any more films. And it was only because of Harvey Weinstein, and Mrs. Brown, which we made for television, we all thought it was going out at Easter on television. And suddenly, what happened there was it changed my entire course of my career. But I do still manage to be in the theater. I’m going to be in the theater the whole of next year.
HW: You’re coming back to the James Bond series as M. Have you talked to the director, Martin Campbell, about what this one will be like?
JD: I haven’t seen Martin since we did Golden Eye. Haven’t seen him lately, just been told I’m gonna do it. And he’ll tell me how to do it.
HW: Have you worked with Daniel Craig before?
JD: No. I’m absolutely thrilled.
HW: Is that a character you’d like to come back to indefinitely?
JD: M? Well it can’t be indefinite, she’d drop off behind—I’m surprised I’m in this one. But she’d drop off, poor old thing, she wouldn’t get that far. No, I’m grateful to do it this time.
HW: How are you handling the world wide stardom that you now have?
JD: Well I’m amazed, because when I came back here after a gap of 38 years, because I’d come with the Old Vic in 1959, completely falling in love with America, and said I can never go back, because it’s never going to be the same, I’m never going to like this much. And then 38 years later, I came back. And I had that experience all over again. But people then said to me, apart from M in the Bond films, and Mrs. Brown, “What else have you done?” And I thought, “Practically the whole canon of Shakespeare!” But that’s what is so exciting, and unexpected.
HW: Did that change when you won an Oscar in front of the whole world?
JD: Well, I think it did. But I don’t think still anyone knew what I did in the 38 years. [Laughs] I just want to be asked to play things, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want people to say, when are you going to retire? Oh that’s a terrible thing to say. Because the one thing you don’t want to do is get bored and boring, by not having a stimulus and not learning something new, and not meeting new people. I love it.
