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
Sean Mathias joined by Kathleen Turner, Eileen Atkins, Roger Rees and Cynthia Nixon. It earned nine Tony Award nominations including Best Director of a Play. Mathias directed his first Stephen Sondheim musical, "A Little Night Music", at the West End National Theatre in October 1995, with Judi Dench and Siân Phillips. Other London directorial credits include "Antony and Cleopatra", starring Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren, in 1998, and Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly Last Summer" with Sheila Gish in April to July 1999 at the Comedy Theatre. Mathias' career then moved to New York, where, in October 2001, he directed McKellen and Helen Mirren