Dame Judi Dench says one actor would never look her in the eye – for the oddest reason

Dame Judi Dench, one of the UK’s most celebrated actors with a career on stage and on screen stretching back to the mid-1950s, says that there’s former co-star with she could never quite see eye-to-eye.

Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, the star, who celebrates her 90th birthday today (Monday, December 9), recalled her time performing alongside heartthrob Lawrence Harvey in Henry V at The Old Vic in 1958.

Dame Judi revealed: “Larry Harvey never looked into my face. Larry Harvey was constantly a bit higher than my head and a foot above my head. He would never look at me, never”.

She stated that he thought a taller person should play Catherine of Valois. Despite her attempts to attract his attention by stretching her neck, she admits: “It never worked”.

Her love for Shakespeare was ignited after watching her brother in a play: “I went to see Macbeth at St Peter’s with Peter, my oldest brother, playing Duncan. And he walked in and he said, ‘ What bloody man is that? ‘ I thought, ‘ This is for me'”.

However, despite her reputation as a dramatic actress, one of her earliest theatre memories is from a comedy.

She found Cuckoo in the Nest, a 1920s Ben Travers farce, to be hilarious, and was taken home halfway through.

People were sleeping when something unexpectedly opened and he jumps up in what we call long johns.

I was so embarrassed to be taken home that I laughed. I made myself ill laughing”.

After Judi finished writing herself, her mother suggested that since the man’s first appearance would be less shocking the second time around, they would go back to the theater a few days later to try it once more.

She said: “We’ll go back and see what happens. So we returned two days later and saw it once more.

Source: Mirror