By Philip Berk December 2009
Judi Dench rolls in like an armored tank ready to take on the world despite her 75 years.
This was her first musical role on film. Any trepidation?
“Not at all because I feel easy in my skin about doing a musical, which was entirely due to (director) Hal Prince who came over to do Cabaret in London. He gave me a wonderful note I’ve never forgotten, which said, ‘If that is the way you speak, then that is the way you sing, and you never finish speaking and assume another voice’ It was an absolutely golden note for me.”
How is her French in real life?
“Zilch. Really bad. I just about get by but that’s all.”
She has wonderful rapport with Daniel on screen. How well did they know each other? Did it happen in rehearsal”
A: Well, it was a fabulous relationship – the two characters, but I’ve known Dan for years because I played Gertrude when he played Hamlet at the national in the ’70s. We’ve known each other for a very, very long time. You can have a shortcut because you know and understand the person but I defy anybody not to be able to work with Daniel. He’s just spectacular.”
Did she forgive him for walking out on her?
“Oh, completely. That was just something that happened. I was glad to have been there though, at the time.”
She originated the role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” Does she have special memories of that?
A: It’s such a long time ago. I was doing a play in London called Promise with Ian McKellen and Ian McShane, and Hal came to see it, and he asked me to go the next day with my agent and he said will she come and sing something, so we went to lunch. I had glass of wine because I was so frightened and then we went into the theatre to sing it. I asked could I sing it from the wings with a piano? Very well. So in fact what happened is that Hal sat out in the theatre and I did sing it from the wings with a piano. Then I was cast in it; so it was a totally new thing for me and with a lot of dancers, and I remember I used to keep my door open the whole time because I used to come with notes and all sorts of things to help me through. I’d always been a bit of a dancer. I’d wanted to dance as a child, but in those days, y’know… Sally wears green nail varnish in the play. In those days, in ’68 we had no nail varnish; so we had to send to America for it. It used to come in a batch of 3. We never had things like false eyelashes and all the dancers used to make these fantastically wonderful false eyelashes which they used to bring to me. They’d come with a lot of notes and things like that. I was very much helped by them because I was completely new but I used to keep, on my dressing table, Christopher Isherwood’s book Goodbye to Berlin open all the time because in it you know he says that Cliff walks into the room and that she stands there, and he reiterates that she never ever could have been a star. Although here was something about her that you couldn’t stop watching, and I used to read it every single night as a kind of boost.
How important is the director?
“I am a person who vitally, vitally needs the director. Passionately needs the director. It’s up to us to contribute to that. I find it most painful the day the director can’t speak to you anymore, that you’re running the play and he’s sitting at the back writing notes on a piece of paper. I hate that because in a way it’s like allowing the baby to walk for the first time and I always find that very painful and unnerving.
Do she ever disagree with the director?
“Oh,yes, disagree with the director? Absolutely. No, I would argue a point if I felt that it was vital. It used to be the director would say, “And you move there, and then you move upstage and you…” Well, it’s not like that anymore. It’s much more diplomatic now. I remember once telling Sam Mendes, who directed The Cherry Orchard – I remember telling him, “Sam, Sam, I just want to try this scene in a slightly different way.” He was very young at the time. It was about the second thing he did,and he was sitting on a chair trying to avoid my stare and he said, “You can try it, but it won’t work.” I was immediately incensed and I’ve never let him forget it.”
Is there any film from the period of Italian cinema that has influence her?
“I remember La Dolce. I have to tell you a really terrible thing. I did a film, very, very, very long ago called The Third Secret. Nobody will have seen it. Nobody, I never saw it, but in it was Vittorio de Sica and one morning he took me for a coffee. I was so young, I was just at the Old Vic and we had coffee together, and I said, ‘What are you going to do next?’ He said, ‘I’m going to make a film – back to Rome to make a film.’ I said to him, I mean it’s forever on my conscience, ‘Will it be the first film you’ve made?’ He said, ‘You may have heard of a little thing called The Bicycle Thieves.’ Then, of course, it completely flooded in. I wasn’t able to say another word to him.
Her relationship to musicals?
“I absolutely love musicals.”
The absolute revelation of the film is Marion Cotillard. Not only is she grace personified on screen but her singing takes your breath away. Never a false note.
Getting a chance to sing in this film, was that a dream come true?
“It was my dream to do a musical. An American musical, because as a kid, I loved American musicals so much. I thought it was not possible for a French actress to do a musical, and when Rob called me to audition for Nine, I was so fortunate and happy to be a part of this amazing American musical, and especially one directed by him, who is the maestro of musicals.”
What was it like working with him?
“There is so much love in this man. Love for people. Love for dancing, singing, cinema, musicals, actors. He works with amazing people… John DeLuca and Paul Bugaev, who was our marvelous singing teacher. But singing teacher is too small to describe what he did with all of us on this movie, because he had a way to take all of us where the performance, the singing, would be so alive and so close to authenticity, to reality, yet in the dream. And also the dancers we worked with, all of Rob’s team is full of love. They were so confident that we could dance, that we could sing. It’s not so easy to sing and dance. Rob creates an atmosphere of work and joy. He is very good with actors. He’s an amazing dancer himself. He knows how to do musicals. He’s also a fantastic director; he really goes into details with actors. I could talk about him forever, because of his passions… and his kindness. If I say he’s the nicest man in the world, it’s not just an expression, it’s what he gets from people by being so elegant. We didn’t want to finish the movie. Nobody wanted to finish the movie. It becomes a family, but this family was very, very hard to leave.”
Did she get lots of bruises and rug marks or cuts from that dance number?
“Actually, yes. When they give me the song, I thought it was so powerful. The first time they showed me what they wanted to do with the choreography, it was very exciting, because when you see something, you ask yourself, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?’ and you are not sure. As an actress, that’s what I love. This particular song – it’s not sexy, it’s fierce. She is desperate to tell him that she’s empty. He took everything out of her. It was so special to do. I love that we can show again many levels of Luisa. She’s not weak. She’s suffering, and she’s showing him what it is to suffer. She just needs some respect.
Talk about the audition?
“My first audition was not for Luisa. It was for Lilly La Fleur, when she was still French, and for Claudia. And then the second audition – I was so happy that I had a second audition. The second audition was a dancing audition. That was hard. I had to learn a lot of choreographies. Very hard choreographies. I always work for my audition, and that time, I was so busy that I didn’t really have the time to work. I was freaking out. i was in my hotel room in New York and I tried to work on the choreography but I had a very big problem with my left and right. It was like Mein Herr (from Cabaret), which is so hard to do. I went to the audition dancing in the street like a freak because I was trying to remember every choreography. I ended up not doing those choreographies at all. We danced with Rob. I had such an amazing time. And with John DeLuca (his partner.) They wanted to know how I could dance. Thank God I was able to follow. And then, that same day, they asked me if I would audition for another part, and they gave me two songs: Be On Your Own and My Husband Makes Movies. I didn’t realize that it was Luisa’s character, because i didn’t know the musical. Then the third audition was two days after. I had to work with Paul Bugaev for an hour, and then Rob would come. I had learned Be On Your Own. He told me you should work on My Husband Makes Movies, and I said, ‘But it’s really hard. I mean, in two days, and I have a lot of things to do.’ And again, I was freaking out. Then I tried to work on My Husband Makes Movies. I arrived with Paul, and we worked for an hour, and I couldn’t sing the song because it’s so complicated. I really couldn’t do it. I was like, Am I going to fail at that point? Sometimes, miracles happen, and Rob arrived. I thought I might try to do something. Suddenly, I don’t know what happened, maybe because it was meant to be, but I was able to sing the song. Then right away, they told me that I got the part.”