Judi Dench gets emotional while discussing late husband's death

Dame Judi Dench struggled to hold back her tears while discussing her late husband Michael Williams’ death in 2001 in a new interview.

The actress, 87, was appearing on BBC Two’s Louis Theroux Interviews with the documentary maker, 52, when she began to get emotional.

Louis said to her: ‘You were together from 71 to 2001…Are you OK talking about how it came to an end, how he came to die?’

The Oscar winner replied: ‘Well he wasn’t well…I’m not good at it, actually. Yes, he died in 2001 of lung cancer. Smoking you see, all that smoking when we were young.

‘I was in New York and they said he was not well. My agent flew out and we came back on Concorde the next day and it aborted take-off.

‘We got off and we went back and said: «Oh, it’ll be alright.» We got on another plane and the same thing happened. It was a long old time to get back.

‘We got back here and we were all in the house together and that was very, very good indeed.’

Dame Judi met Michael when they were cast together in a theatre production, but recently revealed he’s not the only co-star she’s fallen in love with on stage.

The acting icon has mused about her ‘susceptibility’ to falling for her theatre co-stars, revealing she was smitten with her Hamlet stage partner John Neville. 

Speaking during an event at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End earlier this year, Dame Judi called their time together in 1958 ‘beautiful’.

Daily Mail’s Richard Eden said the iconic star explained: ‘I was in Hamlet with John Neville. He was beautiful.It was beautiful.’

Asked if she fell in love with Neville, who died in 2011 aged 86, she replied: ‘Yes. I am very prone to it. I am very susceptible.’

‘It does not happen all the time, and it does not go to enormous extremes, but it is, perhaps, sharing [stage] fright that is so electrifying.’

Acclaimed theatre actor John Neville married his wife Caroline Hooper in 1949, and they had six children together. 

Dame Judi made her RSC debut as Anya in The Cherry Orchard in 1961 before starring in Twelfth Night and Macbeth.She later carved out an equally stellar film career. 

Her 30-year marriage to Michael was just as successful in real life as it was in the long-running sitcom A Fine Romance, in which they co-starred until his death from lung cancer in 2001 aged 65.

The couple married in 1971 and shared a daughter, Finty Williams, 48, who is also an actress.

The actress has been with her partner, the conservationist David Mills, for 12 years.Mills revealed last year that they considered tying the knot during the pandemic, even going to the extent of weighing up the benefits of marriage.

‘We hadn’t really looked into it before, but, during lockdown, we had a serious discussion, looking at the pros and cons,’ Mills told Richard Eden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

‘After a lot of thought, we decided against it and thought, «We are happy to stay as we are.»‘