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United States Judi Dench reveals her secret tribute to late friend Maggie Smith
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Dame Judi Dench has shared her poignant and deeply personal tribute to her late friend and fellow actor Dame Maggie Smith.
Dame Maggie, who enjoyed a celebrated career spanning more than 60 years, died aged 89 in September this year.
She and Dame Judi worked together on several occasions, including in the 1984 film A Private Function and in 1999’s Tea With Mussolini, having first met in a dressing room at the Old Vic theatre in 1957.
Arguably, their most famous collaboration was 1985’s A Room with a View, though they also co-starred in 2004’s Thirties-set costume drama Ladies in Lavender, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in 2011, and its 2015 sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Dame Judi is known to plant individual trees in memory of friends at her home in Surrey, where she has a private forest.
She spoke about the tradition in an episode of Louis Theroux Interviews... where she showed the documentary-maker trees named after loved ones including Alan Rickman, Helen McCrory, Diana Rigg and her late husband, Michael Williams.
In an interview recorded for a BBC tribute to Dame Maggie, due to be broadcast today (28 December), she shared that her gardener recently discovered the sapling she planted for Smith had borne fruit.
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“Joe, who works for me, came in and he had one little crab apple,” she told the broadcaster. “And so I had it in my pocket at her funeral, which was a very nice thing to have.”
Dame Judi reportedly broke down in tears when asked about her grief over her friend’s death during an appearance at Cheltenham Literature Festival in October.
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She initially appeared to be in a jovial mood, until fellow actor Brendan O’Hea, asked her about grief.
“I know I probably shouldn’t bring this up, I know the last week has been tricky for you because you lost your great friends Maggie Smith and Barbara Leigh-Hunt,” O’Hea said.
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Leigh-Hunt, who had appeared alongside Dame Judi in BBC sitcom As Time Goes By, died in September aged 88.
O’Hea then asked Dame Judi what she had meant when she had once compared grief to petrol.
“I suppose because the energy that’s created by grief…,” Dame Judi began to say before cutting her answer short as she teared up.
In a separate BBC interview for its Lives Well Lived series, also set to air on Saturday 28 December, Dench and Smith’s mutual friend Charles Dance – who directed them in Ladies in Lavender – said he felt lucky to have worked with the legendary stars.
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“I had Judi Dench and Maggie Smith... I could have shot the telephone directory with those two,” he recalled.
“They just went for it. Little things like they’re running up the stairs together, there’s Judi trying to get up there before Maggie, and Maggie saying, ‘Stop pushing me, stop pushing me!’ That’s all ad-libbed, you know. It was wonderful.”
Dame Maggie was widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of her generation, winning two Oscars and working with fellow stars including Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and Alan Bennett.
She achieved a new wave of fame as she was cast in her later years in two of her most popular roles: Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, and Lady Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in ITV’s hit series Downton Abbey.
Lives Well Lived airs on BBC2 at 6pm on 28 December, with Maggie Smith at the BBC on next at 7pm.
