WRITING EXCLUSIVELY FOR HELLO! DAME JUDI DENCH TELLS THE HEARTWARMING STORY OF HER ADOPTED BEAR FINTY-AND HOW YOU CAN HELP THESE BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS

Dame Judi Dench is one of Britain's finest actors on stage and screen, winning an Oscar in 1999. She was married for 30 years to fellow actor Michael Williams before his death in 2001 and they had one daughter, Finty, now 51 and also an actress. A friend of the King and Queen, she was made a Dame in 1988.

She has long been committed to animal welfare and has written this piece for HELLO! calling for an end to one particularly cruel practice...

'As a child, I had a home filled with animals and have done so all my life and it's a passion shared by my whole family.

I have always felt a strong sense of how important it is to care for animals, along with the natural world. So when I heard about the urgent work that Animals Asia is doing to end the cruel practice of bile farming in Vietnam, I was pleased to support the cause.

Across Vietnam, hundreds of bears are suffering, trapped in tiny cages and existing in unimaginable pain. Every day, farmers extract their bile for use in traditional medicine. I was shocked to learn that the creatures are kept in a constant state of hunger and thirst - a cruel practice that is said to make their bile more potent.