When I’m asked what actress I admire most people are often surprised by my response. I suspect they think my answer will be someone closer to my age or at least one of the classic examples like Meryl Streep. But from the first time I saw Dame Judi on the screen in Henry V I’ve had only one actor in my mind.
In seventh grade I went with classmates from a summer theatre program to see the recently-released film. It was there, watching these amazingly well-trained actors, that I first understood what people were talking about when they raved about Shakespeare and it was there that I found my model for what it meant to be an actress. As Dench’s character tells her companions that their host has died the entire scene focuses on her captivating round little face, enjoying the deliciousness of words, cheeks glowing with smoky laughter and eyes that make crying seem like something not at all shameful, but natural and necessary.
Lisa Cole Smith
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Most of the characters I have seen her play have been middle-aged women and I think that is part of what makes her so compelling. Whether queen or housewife, she is mature but not at all afraid to enjoy playing. Her pixie haircut and devilishly glinting eyes add an enormous amount of humor and humanity to her roles. I want her as a pal. She is someone whose heart is big enough to care deeply about people and important things but ready to cause a little mischief when mischief is what is called for. She manages to be innocent and wise at the same time, both pure and sensual. She is grandmother, best friend and wide-eyed ingénue regardless of her age.
Recently I realized it isn’t just that I want to be an actress like Judi Dench. Sometimes I want to be her. What makes her so amazing to me as an actress is what makes her such a vibrant person—her ability to be fully and completely present. There are no broad brushes in her tool box. She manages to be keenly aware of everything going on around her while not planning for the next moment or bit of conversation, moving through time in a subtle series of micro-moments. She’s just listening, being attuned and responding from a place of grounded strength even in the midst of temporary weakness.
I think God intends us to live life like that. Jesus reminds us repeatedly not to worry because worry prevents us from being open to the present moment, and to the Spirit.
Once I saw an interview where Judi Dench answered a question about how she manages to be so emotionally convincing on stage and screen. Her reply was simple. She realized long ago that laughing and crying were linked. You can’t really laugh if you can’t cry and vice versa. You can’t turn your emotions on and off at will. So she determined that if she felt like laughing she would laugh and if she felt like crying she would cry. She gave up worrying about what was appropriate and focused instead on what was real. The famous playwright David Hare once said that “some actors use acting as a mask, but not Judi Dench; she invites you into her soul.” I want so much to have that kind of bravery, to be willing to be transparent because transparency is necessary in order to be fully present. And what is revealed in that kind of transparency from Dench is a woman who knows who she is and who she is not.
It seems to me that we all have a choice to walk around with a mask or invite people into our souls. We long for genuine community and a place where it is safe to be truly present with one another. Yet so much of the time we all look to one another and say, “You go first.” Maybe when I say, “I want to be Judi Dench,” what I’m really saying is I want to be me but a me whose transparency reveals a woman grounded in ultimate truth and deep self-knowledge, a person who is not masked by anxiety but willing to be present and open in the way that God created us all to be. I want to be like a child, in love with discovery of the world around me and in true faith that God’s love shapes my identity. That transparency and presence is nothing to be feared, but is a gift from God allowing me to truly live.
Lisa Cole Smith (lsmith@convergenceccf.net) is pastor of Convergence: a Creative Community of Faith, a Baptist congregation in Alexandria, Va.