She’s one of the people to whom I mentally append their title as though it were the same word as their first name. She is Damejudi Dench. And while she is in a similar category in many ways as Damehelen Mirren, I feel as though she’s the more accessible of the two. It’s hard to picture Dame Helen playing Philomena, for example, because you rather expect that Dame Helen would go after those nuns with an Uzi or something. Dame Judi can be very British about it and keep her pain quietly inside. Though if you want to see her being fierce, we’ve got choices for that, too.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen her in anything before I saw Shakespeare in Love, the role for which she won an Oscar. As it happens, I’ve long been a fan of Queen Elizabeth the historical figure, and Dame Judi did something that very seldom happens—she played the monarch as an old woman. A surly, bitter old woman, come to that, a woman who has been pretty much alone while surrounded by people for decades. It’s a heck of a performance and a take on Elizabeth that few people have even tried.

These days, she’s actually too old to play Elizabeth I, who died younger than Dame Judi is now. In fact, she’s older now than Queen Victoria lived to be. But then, she doesn’t seem 82, which is part of why it’s taken me so long to get to her, I suspect. It feels as though she’ll be around forever, along with Dame Helen and Dame Maggie Smith (who, yes, I’ll get to soon). Those three lovely old British ladies who are so good at playing people with titles. Dame Judi has played Victoria twice, Elizabeth I, Katherine of France, and any number of duchesses, countesses, princesses, and ladies.

But she was also Oscar nominated for the working class Philomena Lee. She played Mrs. Fairfax, Mr. Rochester’s housekeeper in Jane Eyre. Mistress Quickly, not explicitly a madame, in Henry V. Any number of entertainers and writers, too. It seems rather unusual to me that she’s good at crossing the class boundary, something British actors don’t often do. She plays ladies and housewives both, and M and once a cow in possibly the single most forgotten Disney animated film.

She is also one of those people who doesn’t seem to show the slightest sign of slowing down. She’s got three movies coming out this year. She already has two upcoming credits, though one is merely rumored. I suspect she’ll be one of those people getting releases for some time after her death, which hopefully will not be for a long time. Not for her Olivia de Havilland’s graceful retirement in Paris; Dame Judi will keep going until she can’t anymore, I suspect. Which is good for us, because it means she’ll keep giving us fine performances.

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