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 playhouse project due to be completed in 2019 in the town of Prescot in Knowsley, near Liverpool. She is patron of East Park Riding for the Disabled, a riding school for disabled children at Newchapel, Surrey. Dench is also a Vice-President of national charity Revitalise, that provides accessible holidays for those with disabilities. In 2011, along with musician Sting and billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, she publicly urged policy makers to adopt more progressive drug policies by decriminalizing drug use. Dench was one of 200 celebrities to sign an open letter to the people of Scotland asking them to vote No