Jeffery Dench Jeffery Dench Jeffery Danny Dench (29 April 1928 – 27 March 2014) was an English actor, best known for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was the older brother of actress Judi Dench. Jeffery Dench was born in Tyldesley, Lancashire to Eleanora Olave (née Jones), a native of Dublin, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a physician who met his future wife while studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin. Jeff lived in Tyldesley with his brother Peter; later the family moved to York where his sister, Judith, was born. Dench attended St Peter's, York, where he began acting with the
Rodney Ackland in the 1980s, while ailing with leukaemia, Rodney Ackland rewrote aspects of this play, re-titling it "Absolute Hell". It was put on in its new form in 1988 to considerable success at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames, directed by Sam Walters and John Gardyne, and starring Polly Hemingway and David Rintoul. In 1991 it was adapted and directed for BBC Television by Anthony Page, starring Dame Judi Dench, and the play was revived by Page at the Royal National Theatre in 1995, again with Dench in the leading role. See also Nick Smurthwaite's theatre profile of Ackland for The Stage,