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 in the West End including the role of Miss Trant in the 1974 musical version of "The Good Companions" at Her Majesty's Theatre. In 1981, Dench was due to play Grizabella in the original production of "Cats", but was forced to pull out due to a torn Achilles tendon, leaving Elaine Paige to play the role. She has acted with the National Theatre in London where she played an unforgettable Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (1987). In September 1995, she played Desiree Armfeldt in a major revival of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music", for which she won an Olivier