Helen Mirren actors to achieve the “Triple Crown of Acting”, joining the ranks of legends including Ingrid Bergman‚ Dame Maggie Smith, and Al Pacino. In 1998, Mirren played Cleopatra to Alan Rickman's Antony in "Antony and Cleopatra" at the National Theatre. The production received poor reviews; "The Guardian" called it "plodding spectacle rarely informed by powerful passion", while "The Daily Telegraph" said "the crucial sexual chemistry on which any great production ultimately depends is fatally absent". In 2000 Nicholas Hytner, who had worked with Mirren on the film version of "The Madness of King George", cast her as Lady Torrance in his
Judi Dench novel "Esio Trot" (1990), in which a retired bachelor falls in love with his widowed neighbour, played by Dench, who keeps a tortoise as a companion after the death of her husband, First broadcast on BBC One on New Year's Day 2015, it became one of the most-watched programmes of the week, and earned Dench her first Best Actress nomination at the 2016 International Emmy Awards. On her performance, "Telegraph"s Michael Hogan commented: "We've grown accustomed to seeing Dench in forbidding roles, but here, she recalled her footloose, flirtatious side, displayed in sitcoms as "A Fine Romance" and "As Time