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| Actress Judi Dench in 'Philomena' |
Judi Dench had a strange moment in
West Africa in the early 1960s.
“During the tour, we went to lunch
with a man from the British Council, and in the middle of the lunch I suddenly
had a premonition that was so strong I asked if I could phone home to England,
in a total stranger’s home,” she recalled in her memoir And Furthermore. “I rang home, and Daddy had just had his second
heart attack. He had recovered from the first one in 1954, but this one was
much more serious, and somehow I sensed it from thousands of miles away.”
Later, back in England in
rehearsal at the Oxford Playhouse, she had a second premonition.
“I had set off from my flat in
Regent’s Park Terrace when I suddenly had the strongest feeling that I should
go back and ring Daddy. I talked to him and Mummy for about 20 minutes, and
then I set off again for the rehearsal, and now I was quite late, just after
midday, when usually I am one of the first to arrive. Daddy died later that
day, just after midday. I didn’t know he was going to die, it was the same as
in West Africa, I just knew I had to talk to him.”
Oddly enough, in West Africa Dench
had been playing a witch (in addition to Lady Macbeth). In Oxford, she had been
playing the Queen of Fairy in Ben Jonson’s The
Alchemist.
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