Judi There Is Nothing Like This Dame

The show has always gone on for Dame Judi Dench, who even in COVID lockdown created TikTok videos with her grandson. Now, she’s back on the silver screen in a role that reminded her of her wartime childhood.

- Juliet Rieden

Five years ago, Dame Judi Dench succumbed to her first tattoo. Etched on her wrist are the words ‘Carpe Diem’, a birthday gift and a reminder perhaps of a credo that has shaped both her career and her life.

The multi-award-winning actor has been ‘seizing the day’ since she first played Shakespeare’s Ophelia at age 22 at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre. Now she’s 86, and despite being one of the finest and most feted actors in the world, Judi has never rested on her gleaming laurels; in fact, she still crosses her fingers, hoping she will be hired again. “You worry about the next work, which is why I never turn anything down. But I wouldn’t change that because there’s something about being a bit insecure about the job you do that I think is quite healthy,” she declared in a recent interview.

The idea that the brilliant Dame Judi Dench worries about her job prospects may sound ridiculous, and yet in the past year of the UK’s lockdowns, with theatres and film sets largely closed and most of the population isolated at home, Judi, like everyone in her industry, has been observing an enforced hiatus, wondering if life will ever be the same again.

It hasn’t been easy for the self-confessed workaholic, but her 23-year-old grandson, Sam Williams (daughter Finty’s son), has made good use of his grandma’s untapped talents on a stage she’s never before graced – TikTok!