JUDI DENCH

The indomitable Dame Judi Dench, 76, has already been seen as chatty housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax in Jane Eyre earlier this year.

Judi Dench in a scene from 'Jane Eyre.'

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By Laurie Sparham, Focus Features

She also pops up in two highly anticipated biopics this fall -- My Week With Marilyn, about sex symbol Marilyn Monroe's trip to England to shoot 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl, and J. Edgar, in which she plays the monstrous mother of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.


Waiting in the wings next spring is her third effort with her Shakespeare in Love director John Madden as a widow starting life anew in India in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

More: Dench checks in to 'The Exotic Marigold Hotel'

But this summer, "I took a bit of time off," Dench says. The break became possible after a cast member in a London stage revival of Sondheim on Sondheim took ill. "I'm still waiting but I had a glorious summer. And I have to wind myself up for Mr. Bond."

That would be James Bond to you. The much-delayed and still-untitled 23rd thriller featuring the debonair spy is expected to start shooting sometime this fall in order to reach theaters by next November. For the seventh time, Dench will be 007's supervisor M, a position she has held since 1995, breaking in two Bond actors -- Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig -- in the process.

In Marilyn, which opens Nov. 4, she brings to life another grand dame of British stage and cinema, Sybil Thorndike -- "a small role," she says.

But Dench is most excited about J. Edgar, as she embodies the woman responsible for nurturing Hoover's less commendable attributes that would often hamper his crime-fighting pursuits. Oscar watchers are already predicting she might pick up a seventh nomination.

Of Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role: "Gosh, he's a hard worker." As for director Clint Eastwood: "Just wonderful. It is thrilling to work with him." As for herself: "It's very nice being a horrible person."