Best 58 quotes of Judi Dench on MyQuotes

And then it was working with Bob Hoskins, who I had never worked with before - except radio. It was like being given a wonderful meal - full of the things you love most.

Anything that we can do to improve the lives of elderly people is welcome so far as I am concerned.

Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.

Every experience that you experience yourself you use, because that's our craft.

Everything, every part that you approach has to be somehow rooted in yourself. You have to somehow root everything so that it's not just words coming out of you.

Filming is completely - was totally new to me ... I had a movie career which wasn't supposed to be, so I couldn't be more thrilled. For those who work, parts seem to get more interesting.

Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.

I can't read scripts any more because of the trouble with my eyes.

I couldn't be a one-woman show, since I wouldn't have anybody to bounce off from. Once you're out there, dribbling on, you have nobody to interrupt you. I love being part of a company, and telling a story.

I don't really want to retire. I intend to go on working as long as I can because I still have a huge amount of energy.

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

I don't think that care homes are all rotten old places that ought to be shut down.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

I felt quite a responsibility when I played Elizabeth I but nobody here remembers her! And then I felt a responsibility when I played Queen Victoria but not many people remember her.

I get sillier as I get older, so I don't know what wisdom means. I can only pass on something that I've been acquainted with and let whomever it is pick the bones out of it

I have a completely new knee. It's brilliant. I am not feeling my age at all. I feel about 43, a willowy blonde 43 years old with long legs.

I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again.

I like to push myself beyond the limit every now and again.

I'm always fearful. … Fear generates in you a huge energy. You can use it. When I feel that mounting fear, I think, 'Oh, yes, there it is!' It's like petrol.

In contrast, the control you have in a theatre is very attractive to me.

In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.

I once said to someone when I was playing Lady Macbeth and they said: "That's tricky, emotionally, what do you do about murdering your husband's cousin?" And there are, of course, things that aren't in your personal repertoire that you have to somehow understand by reading or watching other things and listening to other people talk about them.

I played Iris Murdoch, who had not long died, and I felt the responsibility very heavy on my shoulders.

I started off as a theatre designer, and by some extraordinary circumstance I saw something in Stratford-upon-Avon, and realized that that's the kind of design I want, but also that that's the kind of designer I'll never be.

I think you can teach people a technique - you can teach them how to use their voices, how to breathe properly, how to move their limbs a certain way. But to actually explain how one performs comedy or drama or tragedy isn't the same as the movements one makes.

I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself - that is the best combination.

I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.

It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.

I trained as a designer, so I'm always terribly keen about what I'm going to look like.

It takes courage to recognize the real as opposed to the convenient.

It was good to learn so early. They're not going to be kind to you. You have to do it and get on, and then gulp down and get better.

I've always loved painting, although I never show anyone what I've done. Mainly because I don't do it well. But it's like a form of visual diary for me. A way of fixing things in my mind.

I've figured out what to do so far, but it's always the next thing you come to where the man with the bucket of ice cold water is waiting - whoosh! in your face. That's why you work with directors who know what to tell you to do.

I was in Yorkshire. We were a family of five and I used to be sent sometimes to get the rations for the week and was easily able to carry them back. It was like one egg and a tiny bit of tea.

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

I would hate people to think bossy is all I can do.

I would like to work with Jack Nicholson, before it's too late.

Most things don't work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff.

My husband was actually very keen that I would become a Bond girl.

Never fall out of love with life

One of the benefits of being a mature well-educated woman is that you're not afraid of expletives. And you have no fear to put a fool in his place. That's the power of language and experience. You can learn a lot from Shakespeare.

People seem to have this idea that I've always been very ambitious. Nothing could be further from the truth.

People think you know beforehand when you win an Oscar - I can assure you you don't.

Seriously, though, I think I never ceased to be grateful of the fact that I am able to do a job that I really love - I never got over that.

Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right.

Sometimes nudity is gratuitous. We just live in a society where everything goes.

The difficulty with any sort of esteem is that more is expected of you.

The Lord Chamberlin was censoring scripts when I first came into the theater.

The need for a global structure of control in the form of a world environment court is now more urgent than ever before.