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
Maggie Smith her first Emmy Award for the 2003 TV film "My House in Umbria". On stage, she starred as Madeleine Palmer, opposite Judi Dench, in the David Hare play "The Breath of Life" in 2002, toured Australia in Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads" in 2004, and starred in "The Lady from Dubuque" in 2007. Beginning in 2010, Smith appeared as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the British period drama "Downton Abbey". This role won her a Golden Globe Award and two Emmy Awards. In 2014, the role also won her a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2012, she played Muriel