Dame Judi Dench says it's never too late to be a fairy

» By namita | the 08-15-2009 at 23:32 | 77 views (23 unique) | 2 comments | Report post!

The 74-year-old actress is to star as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose Theatre in Kingston Upon Thames. She won acclaim for playing the queen of the fairies for Sir Peter in 1962, when he was the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and agreed to disrobe in his film version six years later.

She had fallen in love with the part during a production at the Mount School, in York, in which the young Dame Margaret Drabble was one of the fairies.

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Prof Stanley Wells, the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, says: "I have never heard of someone in their seventies playing Titania before, but there is something ageless about Judi.

"In the film she played it pretty well nude, which I don't think she was terribly happy with at the time and I don't think she would do it now." He adds, however: "I am sure she will pull it off in some interesting way."