JUDI DENCH DENIES DRESSING ROOM FEUD WITH MAGGIE SMITH

Dame Judi Dench has dismissed long-standing rumours that she fell out with Dame Maggie Smith over dressing room arrangements, calling the idea "ridiculous". The claim features in Dench's memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, written with Brendan O'Hea. When O'Hea raised the rumours in the book, Dench replied: "Don't be ridiculous." She said she and Smith remained friends until Smith's death in 2024, describing her as having "a ferocious intelligence, an acerbic wit" and "not an ounce of vanity".

The rumours appear to have stemmed from the pair's differing preferences during the 2002 play The Breath of Life at the Haymarket Theatre in London. Dench used Dressing Room 10, which she called "exquisite", while Smith took Dressing Room 1, a smaller room nearer the stage, to avoid climbing stairs. Dench wrote that she, too, used to "beg for someone strong to carry me up the three flights to my room" after each show. Responding to the feud speculation, she said: "What's the matter with people? Haven't they got enough to worry about with the play? I never mind where I am."

Dench and Smith met in 1958 at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo, London, where both began their careers. Dench said the two could not have shared a dressing room, describing themselves as "too different": Smith preferred to sit quietly reading, while Dench needed "the hustle and bustle" of people around her. She recalled that while playing Juliet at the Old Vic, she disliked being alone so much that actor Nicholas Meredith began coming into her room to apply his make-up beside her. Her memoir, written with O'Hea, revisits episodes from across her career.