Judi Dench her role in "The Winter's Tale", breaking her own record with her eighth win as a performer. Next, she co-starred as Cecily Neville, Duchess of York to Benedict Cumberbatch's Richard III in the second series of the BBC Two historical series "The Hollow Crown". The same year, she was cast alongside Eva Green and Asa Butterfield in Tim Burton's dark fantasy film "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children". Dench played Miss Esmeralda Avocet, a headmistress who can manipulate time and can transform into a bird. The film garnered mixed reviews from critics, who felt it was "on stronger footing as
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,