Judi Dench Award. In 1989, Judi Dench starred in David Tucker's Behaving Badly for Channel 4, based on Catherine Heath's novel of the same name. After the long period between James Bond films "Licence to Kill" (1989) and "GoldenEye" (1995), the producers brought in Dench to take over as the role of M, James Bond's boss. The character was reportedly modeled on Dame Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996; Dench became the first woman to portray M, succeeding Robert Brown. The seventeenth spy film in the series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional
Judi Dench her most notable achievements with the RSC was her performance as Lady Macbeth in 1976. Nunn's acclaimed production of "Macbeth" was first staged with a minimalist design at The Other Place theatre in Stratford. Its small round stage focused attention on the psychological dynamics of the characters, and both Ian McKellen in the title role, and Dench, received exceptionally favourable notices. "If this is not great acting I don't know what is", wrote Michael Billington in "The Guardian". "It will astonish me if the performance is matched by any in this actress's generation", commented J C Trewin in "The Lady".