Somewhere on a film studio’s cutting room floor is a six-minute scene showcasing the hitherto unheard and unappreciated opera-singing talents of Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. Their rendering of a song from Verdi’s Rigoletto was to have been the climax of their new film, Quartet, but director Dustin Hoffman decided to scrap it — much to the relief of all concerned — because, as Connolly puts it: ‘Let’s face it, we weren’t very good.’ And Tom Courtenay adds: ‘The film is better without our singing. The irony is that all the extras in the film were real opera singers. Any of them could have sung perfectly well while we mimed. But Dustin wanted realism.’
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Dustin Hoffman on directing Dame Maggie Smith in new film Quartet
She says @placeholder gave her free rein to interpret the role how she liked and she partly based it on her mother, who had dementia.