Judi Dench is ‘16 years old’ at heart according to friend and co-star Eddie Izzard

Judi Dench is “young at heart” according to her co-star Eddie Izzard in an interview about their new film Six Minutes to Midnight. 

Eddie Izzard recently spoke about her (Eddie is now ‘she’) new film Six Minutes to Midnight which stars Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent. The film focuses on a real-life Nazi finishing school in Bexhill in south-east England. 

In the film, Judi plays the school’s headmistress Miss Rocholl while Eddie plays Thomas Miller, a spy of British and German descent. The film was co-written by Eddie and is set to be released on 26th March 2021.

In an interview with Metro, Eddie revealed that Judi was always positive on set despite the challenging material. “Judi was just great... It’s quite a heavy day of filming. They were basically listening to Hitler speeches and having to do the Nazi salute all day, so that was a very emotional day. But she was just always great, she’s always very lively and young and has just a great sense of humour,” said Eddie.

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Eddie went on to say that this isn’t the first time she has worked with Judi and she brings the same energy and enthusiasm to set on all of her films. 

“I remember from the film I did before with her, Victoria & Abdul, when I was listening to a Ray Charles number and I was just dancing and I was dressed as Edward VII and she was dressed as Queen Victoria and she started dancing as well. She totally links into the young girl inside of her. She’s still really 16 years old [at heart] which is great,” said Eddie.

Eddie went on to reveal in the interview that she has a personal connection with this film, as she grew up in Bexhill and therefore knew about the history of this school.

“My grandmother was born in this town, and my great-grandmother, so there’s a long history of Izzards going through the town, and so obviously I have a link with the town, and I’m a patron of the museum,” said Eddie.

Eddie went on to reveal why she was inspired to write the screenplay for this film with director Andy Goddard and co-star Celyn Jones, who plays Corporal Willis. 

Eddie said, “They used to listen to Hitler’s speeches – this was in Bexhill in England – and they used to have Hitler speeches on the radio, and they would do the Hitler salute to the actual radio set and all this was going on in the 30s until the war happened, and then it stopped, and so I just thought, ‘There is a film in that!’”