Unlike a lot of women, Dench seems to feel essentially no need to come across as nice, or warm, or fuzzy, at least not in her movie roles. Even Meryl Streep plays cute occasionally, as she does in A Series of Unfortunate Events. But Judi Dench is Nobody's Grandmother. She might condescend to play someone's Aunt Augusta, but if so, she'll do it with vinegar and a health sense of self-regard. In the movies where James Bond is her surrogate son, she'll threaten to have him offed, or transferred, or fed to a cageful of extremely hungry parliamentarians without a qualm. If she's going to play a cute old lady, she'll do it, but only if she gets to open up a cabaret full of strippers. In other words, Dench choses roles where her characters are fairly focused on themselves. They're not living for visits from their grandchildren, or meddling in their children's lives because they can't get let go (they may meddle, but it's going to be because they're curious, or they have a direct interest at stake). In a lot of cases, her characters don't even appear to have children or grandchildren.
And I admit I find that a relief. Not that I'm uninterested in how women handle motherhood and grandmotherhood, and how they incorporate those roles into broader identities. But there are a lot of those portrayals. And there are a lot of portrayals where women are the sum of their motherhood. So it's great to see Judi Dench stride into the latter part of her career as someone who has a life that is entirely her own. Unlike so many other actresses, she's free to be unpleasant, and prickly, and a host of other things. In fact, she may have typecast herself as a tough old broad, and if so, I appreciate it. She's balancing the scales.
(H/T: Jezebel)