Hollywood is Judi Dench’s oyster. The 89-year-old actor has been working steadily in the industry since the 1980s following an acclaimed theatre career, and she shows little sign of slowing down despite being unable to read scripts or see the sets she’s working on due to vision impairment issues. There’s even an ongoing joke that she is always the first female actor of her age to be offered roles, a humorous bone of contention with her friend, the late Maggie Smith.
She might be universally beloved by those in the industry, but Dench herself has had at least one unpleasant experience with a director while making a movie. In 2011, she played a supporting role in Clint Eastwood’s biopic, J Edgar, which stars Leonard DiCaprio as the controversial first director of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. Playing Hoover’s mother, Dench has a small but crucial role in shedding light on the complicated personal life of the main character. But she found the acting experience to be frustrating and emblematic of her least favourite thing about film acting.
Dench recounted her back-and-forth conversation with Eastwood to the BBC’s Louis Theroux in 2022, “‘Mr Eastwood, could we possibly do that again?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, because we’ve just done it once. Could we have another go?’ ‘No.’”
The Gone Baby Gone director’s famously fast-paced style fed into one of Dench’s biggest frustrations about filmmaking. “I mean, for me, the whole filming is…is agony for me simply because you can’t…once it’s, well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said. “Once it’s there, it’s there. If you’re in the theatre you can get it better on Tuesday and perhaps not so good on Friday. But in film, you work on it and you do it and then the director decides and says, ‘Cut’ and that’s a print.”
Dench is not the first actor to complain about Eastwood’s directing style. Tom Hanks, who worked with the director on Sully in 2016, described him as “intimidating as hell” and said he treats actors like horses. Angelina Jolie, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Eastwood’s 2008 drama Changeling, said he was “very decisive” and that his penchant for doing only one or two takes could be “terrifying”.
Still, while Eastwood’s direction might not be everyone’s cup of tea, plenty of actors have praised his quick, no-frills way of working. Tommy Lee Jones, who appeared in the director’s 2000 film Space Cowboys, in which Eastwood also starred, described the filmmaker as “a good friend and heroic character,” adding: “I really admire his style of working and I learned a great deal from working with him, and there’s many things he does as a director that I try to do because they’re the right things to do.”
Even Jolie, who openly admitted to being intimidated by Eastwood’s style, said that there was an upside to it. Moving on after one or two takes instead of doing the same moment over and over again allowed her to bring her best to each one. “[I]f you bring your all and give it everything you’ve got until you’re emotionally drained,” she commented, “He will capture it on film and he won’t ask you to do it 20 times. So, it does allow for you to really push yourself. And because he does do everything in one take, everything is very fresh.”
It might not have won over Dame Judi Dench, but the director’s track record with awards nominations and box office success speaks for itself.