By Fatma Younis
Dame Judi Dench has dismissed longstanding rumors that she fell out with her late friend and fellow actor Dame Maggie Smith over dressing room arrangements during their 2002 West End production of The Breath of Life, calling the suggestion “ridiculous.”
Memoir Addresses Longstanding Speculation
The 91-year-old Oscar winner addresses the speculation in her new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, written with Welsh actor and theatre director Brendan O’Hea. When O’Hea mentioned occasional stories of actors falling out over allocated dressing rooms, Dench replied, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
The rumors appear to have stemmed from the actresses’ different dressing room preferences at London’s Haymarket Theatre. Dench recalled using Dressing Room 10, which she described as “exquisite,” while Smith preferred Dressing Room 1, a smaller space closer to the stage, to avoid climbing stairs. Dench wrote that she also found the three flights of stairs to her room challenging, often asking for someone to carry her up after the show.
Dench said she has never been particularly concerned about backstage placement. “What’s the matter with people? Haven’t they got enough to worry about with the play? I never mind where I am,” she told O’Hea. She added that she enjoys sharing her dressing room with fellow performers because she dislikes being alone, recalling that when she played Juliet at the Old Vic, a colleague joined her to apply makeup so she would not be solitary.
Decades of Friendship and Collaboration
Dench acknowledged that Smith, who died in September 2024, would likely not have enjoyed sharing the space, describing them as “different.” “Mags would prefer to sit in a corner, quietly reading, whereas I need the hustle and bustle of people coming in and out of the room,” Dench wrote.
The pair first met in 1958 at London’s Old Vic as young actresses sharing a dressing room with Moyra Fraser. They recalled spending much of their early time together laughing, with Smith describing it as “total hysteria” and Dench calling it “fright mixed with hysteria.” They later reunited on screen in A Room with a View (1985), Tea with Mussolini (1999), Ladies in Lavender (2004), and the two Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, as well as the 2018 documentary Nothing Like a Dame.
At a 2002 tribute event for Dench, Smith called her “the most tremendous friend” who had been “a huge support and hugely loyal.” After Smith’s death, Dench planted a crab apple tree in her memory, which produced a single fruit on the day of the funeral; Dench carried the apple in her pocket during the service.
In the memoir, Dench offers a candid portrait of Smith as “a very complex person – intensely private, and I suspect quite lonely at times,” but says her abiding memory is one of “unadulterated joy and laughter.” She wrote: “She really was the most marvellous company. She had a ferocious intelligence, an acerbic wit and was very, very funny. God, I miss her.”
