Class Is In Session

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Dench: Certainly not! I was wearing a bald piece first and then that brilliant wig, with hardly any hair in it.

YOUR PERFORMANCES HAVE EARNED EACH OF YOU A GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATION. DO YOU STILL GET EXCITED ABOUT AWARDS?

Dench: Oh, sure, you get excited. Because it's a gauge. Otherwise, how do you know how well a film has done, how well you have done?

DO YOU EVER GET NERVOUS AT AWARDS CEREMONIES?

Blanchett: I did at my first one, when I realized I had this 45-minute press line to walk. The first time I went to the Golden Globes, I literally walked all the way up because no one stopped me, and went, "This is easy!" And then someone said, "No, you've got to come back."

Dench: What is tricky is sitting there and the winners are being announced and the camera is where that coffee pot is [points to a coffee pot a foot away]. When you watch them, of course, you long for somebody to go, "Oh damn!" But nobody ever does, because we're all much too polite.

DO YOU PRACTICE YOUR "GRACIOUS LOSER" FACE?

[Dench stares blankly into the middle distance]

Blanchett: That's it! That's the face! Actually, Judi's never had to put on the gracious-loser face.

Dench: Oh, I have! Sometimes it used to be that if you won something, you never got asked to do anything after that. I don't know why.

JUDI, HOW COME YOU DON'T DO MORE WORK IN HOLLYWOOD?

Dench: No one ever asks. And I'm often in the theater. I'm never asked to make a film in Hollywood.

WOMEN OFTEN SAY THEY FIND IT HARD TO GET GOOD ROLES. IS THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE?

Dench: No. I've just been really lucky to find very different things. I want to play a tightrope walker next. Or a rally driver. But theater is what I know. I don't really know about filming.

BUT YOU'VE DONE ENOUGH MOVIES ...

Dench: Well, yes, and I should get better at it. And I know that very good actors watch the screen, the playbacks, afterwards. That would make me so self-conscious that I wouldn't be able to do the next scene. But I know that that's what I should do.

Blanchett: It's absolutely excruciating to have to watch these things back. There's a great thing about the theater--that you get the chance to get out there and re-offend.

Dench: Absolutely. And again and again, and twice on matinee days.

Blanchett: Whereas in film ... I forget these things are ever going to be seen by anyone. So I'm always surprised when I have to come out to publicize a film, because I just shut the door on it and run in the other direction.

JUDI, YOU ONCE SAID THAT YOU WOULDN'T LIKE TO BE A YOUNG ACTRESS NOW.

Dench: When I first came to the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] in the early '60s, there was a boy in the paint shop painting sets who was called Roger Reese. And he ended up playing Hamlet. That kind of cherishing--we don't have that anymore. And it's never the fact that good actors are in work and bad actors are not in work. We are all aware that right here, right behind your shoulder, is somebody who will do your part and probably a great deal better than you. It's not just one--there's a big line of people. And so it gives you constant fear, which of course gives you constant energy.

YOU REALLY THINK THAT THERE'S A LINE OF PEOPLE BETTER THAN YOU?