Judi Dench Movies

Judi Dench checks into 'Exotic Marigold Hotel'

He took her at her word, and Dench's "stroll" was good enough to win a supporting Oscar for her brief yet indelible portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's Shakespeare in Love.

Now Madden, 62, and this grande dame, 76, have made it a trilogy with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , which opens March 9 and whose trailer premieres Sept. 16.

The travelogue with abundant humor is a contemporary fable about a group of British retirees lured to a supposedly luxury retirement home in India.

Although the set includes Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Dame Maggie Smith, and Slumdog Millionaire 's Dev Patel, Dench proves she still rules.

"Judi is the key to all this," says Madden. "She plays a character very different from what kind of roles we're used to seeing."

Instead of being authoritarian and controlling, he says, Evelyn's is "a very ordinary woman, a widow who was embroiled in a shocking case after her husband dies and leaves her destitute."

For Dench, the shoot in India was like "old home week" because she has worked with her co-stars before, including Penelope Wilton (TV's Downton Abbey ) and Celia Imrie (the Bridget Jones series).

"We did behave ourselves quite well," Dench says. "John Madden kept us in order.

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