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 Newfoundland along with his daughter and his aunt, played by Dench, in hopes of starting his life anew in the small town where she grew up. The film earned mixed reviews from critics, and was financially unsuccessful, taking in just US$24 million worldwide with a budget of US$35 million. Dench received BAFTA and SAG Award nominations for her performance. In 2002, Dench was cast opposite Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Reese Witherspoon in Oliver Parker's "The Importance of Being Earnest", a comedy about mistaken identity set in English high society during the Victorian Era. Based on Oscar Wilde's classic comedy