There’s magic to be mined in mistakes

At regular junctures, Dench imparts nuggets of wisdom. We learn about lighthouse acting and pickup lines. We get a how-to guide in miniature — how to play comedy and tragedy, how to give a soliloquy and speak iambic pentameter. Dench believes that less is more in her profession: “Acting is learning how to edit,” she explains. “Finding the minimum we have to do to create the maximum effect.” She has little time for actors who take the role home with them (“You take the character off with the costume”) or who, in pre-performance read-throughs, “sit around and intellectualize it all.” On several occasions, she employs a character to illustrate her point: Fight scenes have to be choreographed, she says, “otherwise you’re going to get through a lot of Desdemonas.”

Once, in “Romeo and Juliet,” she sneezed while lying on her lover’s tomb; another time, she spoke the line “Where is my father and my mother, nurse?” — and heard her father call out, “Here we are, darling, in row H.” (source)

Shakespeare

The Man Who Pays the Rent

By Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea