Judith Olivia Dench, popularly known as Judi Dench, is a British actress and author. She started out as a stage actress, making her professional theatre debut in 1957, at the age of 23. Soon after, Dench established herself as one of the leading Shakespeare actresses of the time, and subsequently made her feature film debut in 1964, with The Third Secret. Though she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer one year into her film debut, the actress was mostly active in theatre during the first two decades of her career.

In the 1980`s Dench earned wider mainstream recognition as a film and television actress, winning two BAFTA Film Awards for Best Supporting Actress - for her roles in A Room with a View (1985) and A Handful of Dust (1988) - besides two BAFTA TV Awards. She earned international recognition when she played M in the 1995 James Bond film Golden Eye, a role she continued to play in the series until Skyfall (2012). Dench has received seven Academy Award nominations in the course of her career, and has won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress once, for her performance in the 1998 romantic period comedy-drama film Shakespeare in Love. She has also won six BAFTA Film Awards, four BAFTA TV Awards, two SAG Awards, two Golden Globes, seven Olivier Awards and a Tony Award in a career spanning over five decades, and was honoured with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1988. Some of her most critically acclaimed performances have come in films like Mrs. Brown (1997), Iris (2001), Notes on a Scandal (2006) and Philomena (2013). Significant television credits include Behaving Badly, As Time Goes By, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells and Roald Dahl`s Esio Trot. Other notable film credits include Chocolat (2000), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Quantum of Solance (2008), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), Victoria and Abdul (2017) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017). Her other releases include Red Joan (2019) CATS (2020) and Artemis Fowl (2020).