It may seem that Judi Dench was always the prestigious, world-renown actor she is today. But the truth is, for the first half of her career, she was predominantly known as a stage actor, per Biography.com. While she was well known in her home country of England and had made appearances in British television, even receiving a Damehood from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988, American audiences weren’t familiar with Dench until 1995, at the age of 61, when she played the role of M in the James Bond movie “GoldenEye,” per Redbook.
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Her role in James Bond led to new heights of recognition for Dench and a new turn in her career. Two years later, in 1997, she became even more famous for her role in “Mrs. Brown,” which gained her an Oscar nomination. At the age of 65, she won her first Academy Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” and has been nominated six times since. “It’s all very surprising,” she explained to The Guardian in a 2009 interview, “because it came so accidentally … I didn’t think I’d have a film career at all, but theatre’s what I love most, anyway. If you’d said to me 49 years ago that I’d come to enjoy the process of filming, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
