Judi Dench Was Once Told by Director She Had 'Wrong Face' for Movies: 'You'll Never Make a Film'

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Through her prolific film career, Judi Dench proved one doubtful director wrong.

The actress, 87, recalled to The Sunday Times how, back in the 1960s, an unnamed director told her after an audition that she wouldn't make it in the movie world because of her face. Dench had made a career in theater by that point, and years later she would go on to star in countless movies, earning eight Oscar nominations, including one win.

"He was perfectly nice. But at the end he said, 'You'll never make a film. You have the wrong face,' " recalled Dench. "And I said that is fine, I don't like film anyway. I want to go back to the theatre."

Today, even after all her accolades and hit films, Dench said she still doesn't take anything for granted: "You can do something that is a success and then for the next thing you could go arse over tit. You can't ever take it for granted and it's right that we shouldn't."

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Dench said there are certain movies from her career that she can't rewatch out of frustration she could have done something differently in her performance. Particularly, she wants a line redo in her 2001 movie Iris. She earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for that movie, about an accomplished novelist struggling with Alzheimer's disease.

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"The thing about film is you do not get another go at it. There are a lot of films of mine that I have never seen and I don't want to because I would just be irritated," she said. "But you can't make it better! It's that line, 'I … wrote?' [from Iris]. I could do that line much better now. But you see? Too late. Hopeless."

She added, "... There are a lot of my films I haven't seen. Maybe I will one day, when I've forgotten a bit more about them."