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Dame Judi Dench has dismissed longstanding rumours that she fell out with her late friend and fellow actor Maggie Smith over dressing room arrangements, insisting the suggestion was “ridiculous”.
The Oscar winner, 91, addressed the speculation in her memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, written with Welsh actor and theatre director Brendan O’Hea, in which the pair revisit episodes from her personal life and illustrious career.
“I mentioned you and Maggie Smith because you occasionally hear of actors falling out over the dressing room they’ve been allocated. It’s to do with hierarchy and status,” O’Hea told Dench.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied.
The rumours appear to have stemmed, at least in part, from the actresses’ different dressing room preferences when they appeared together in the 2002 play The Breath of Life at London’s Haymarket Theatre.
Dench recalled using Dressing Room 10, which she described as particularly “exquisite”, because Smith wanted Dressing Room 1, a smaller space that was closer to the stage, according to People.
Smith preferred to avoid climbing the stairs to reach her dressing room. Dench wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about the arrangement either, writing: “I know how she felt because at the end of the show I used to beg for someone strong to carry me up the three flights to my room.”.
Dench told O’Hea that she has never been particularly concerned about where she is placed backstage.
“What’s the matter with people? Haven’t they got enough to worry about with the play? I never mind where I am,” she said.
The Skyfall star explained that she has always enjoyed sharing her dressing room with fellow performers, largely because she dislikes being left alone. “I hated being on my own when I played Juliet at the Vic – so much so that Nicholas Meredith, who was playing Capulet, took pity on me and started coming into my room to apply his make-up beside me,” she wrote.
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However, Dench admitted that Smith would likely not have enjoyed sharing the space with her, given how “different” they are.
“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 – the hubbub and the chat and the tannoy turned up to full,” Dench wrote.
Dench and Smith first met in 1958 at London’s Old Vic, where they were young actresses sharing a dressing room with fellow performer Moyra Fraser.
Speaking to NPR in 2005, the pair recalled spending much of their early time together laughing, with Smith describing the experience as “total hysteria” and Dench adding that it was “fright mixed with hysteria”.
They went on to build successful careers separately before reuniting on screen in the 1985 Merchant Ivory film A Room with a View. Their subsequent collaborations included Tea with Mussolini (1999), Ladies in Lavender (2004), and the two Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films.
They also appeared together in the 2018 documentary Nothing Like a Dame, alongside Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright.
At a tribute event for Dench in 2002, Smith recalled that laughter had defined their early years together, before describing her as “the most tremendous friend” who had been “a huge support and hugely loyal”.
After Smith’s death in September 2024, Dench became emotional while discussing her friend at the Cheltenham Literature Festival the following month. She later revealed that she had planted a crab apple tree in Smith’s memory, and that it had produced a single fruit on the day of her funeral. Dench told the BBC she carried the apple in her pocket during the service.
In her new memoir, Dench offered a candid portrait of Smith, describing her as “a very complex person – intensely private, and I suspect quite lonely at times”, but says her abiding memory of her friend is one of “unadulterated joy and laughter”, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“She really was the most marvellous company. She had a ferocious intelligence, an acerbic wit and was very, very funny,” Dench wrote.
“God, I miss her. I sometimes go to pick up the phone, thinking I must give her a ring, just to hear her voice, and I realise she’s no longer there.”
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? is out now.