Dame Judi Dench, 85, looks radiant in British Vogue as she becomes fashion bible’s oldest cover star

Dame Judi Dench has become the eldest woman to ever cover British Vogue in its 104 year history. 

The actress, 85, appears in the June issue of the fashion bible and made history with her cover shoot.  

Dame Judi looked radiant in the shot as she posed in a floral high-necked blouse. 

Speaking to the magazine, she mused that she plans to never retire, laughing:  ‘No, no, no, no. Don’t use that word, Giles. Not in this house. Not here. Wash your mouth out!’ 

Her voice becomes its most electric to quote Dylan Thomas. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light,’ she booms, with all the skill and force of her RSC days. It’s quite something. ‘Never was a truer word spoken,’ she adds.

Judi also discussed how it is living in quarantine at home during Covid-19

‘I am sure I feel like everyone else, such unprecedented times are quite hard to comprehend’, she said. 

‘What is a good thing is that it has made people aware of the predicament of others who are completely alone,’ she says, thoughtfully. ‘If a great deal of kindness comes out of this, then that will be a plus.’

On playing Old Deuteronomy in Cats, she went on: ‘The cloak I was made to wear!’ Like five foxes f**king on my back.

 Filmed in green screen, and with her eyesight impaired, Dench has yet to see the film in full but was far from pleased at how her Old Deuteronomy turned out looking in the pictures she’s seen. She’d hoped she would look rather elegant. 

Instead: ‘A battered, mangy old cat,’ she says appalled. ‘A great big orange bruiser. What’s that about?’ 

Talk soon turned to Dame Judi’s take on a female Bond. 

‘I don’t think Ian Fleming would want a female Bond.’ She’s all for female action leads but, ‘Call it something else, then?’