Judi Dench regular contact with the theatre. Her father, a physician, was also the GP for the York theatre, and her mother was its wardrobe mistress. Actors often stayed in the Dench household. During these years, Judi Dench was involved on a non-professional basis in the first three productions of the modern revival of the York Mystery Plays in 1951, 1954 and 1957. In the third production she played the role of the Virgin Mary, performed on a fixed stage in the Museum Gardens. Though she initially trained as a set designer, she became interested in drama school as her brother Jeff
Judi Dench the role of Mistress Quickly in the RSC's new musical "The Merry Wives", a version of "The Merry Wives of Windsor". Dench appeared opposite Cate Blanchett as a London teacher with a dedicated fondness for vulnerable women in Richard Eyre's 2006 drama film "Notes on a Scandal", an adaption from the 2003 novel of the same name by Zoë Heller. A fan of Heller's book, Dench "was thrilled to be asked to ... play that woman, to try to find a humanity in that dreadful person". The specialty film opened to generally positive reviews and commercial success, grossing US$50 million