The much loved and revered actress Judi Dench is still going strong having just celebrated her eighty second birthday. For decades she played Shakespeare on stage to much acclaim and multiple awards. Only the movie Mrs Brown (Queen Victoria) in her mid sixties brought her to international recognition, and she then proceeded on to become M in Bond films for 17 years, was a seven time Oscar nominee for Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth 1, Chocolat, Philomena etc. Harvey Weinstein, the US producer, who ‘discovered’ her with Mrs Brown asked what she’d been doing before! Such is the cachet of film roles and the oblivion of careers not paraded on the red carpet.
Born 9 December 1934 with a putative time of 7.55pm (astrotheme), she has a lively, adventurous and witty Sun Venus in Sagittarius in the performing 5th house trine Uranus on her Aries Midheaven. With Jupiter in Scorpio in her 4th, a testament to her happy childhood with a General Practitioner father who was interested in amateur dramatics, and her subsequent long and happy marriage to actor Michael Williams.
But it is not an easy chart. Theatre director Richard Eyre remarked in a documentary celebrating her career that, beneath the jokes and immense talent of her craft, she had a ‘troubled soul’. She has three Yods which do suggest strain, focussing on to Pluto, Mars and Saturn – and that is a great deal to live up to. A focal point 12th house Pluto allows her to tap in great depths psychologically. A focal point Saturn requires great dedication to work and responsibilities. Mars tends to be overly scattered but a fast-changing, varied career would soak that up, and she admits to not being good at sitting still and being passive.
A hard-working Capricorn Moon opposes Pluto squaring onto her Uranus, so she’ll be emotionally changeable, able to connect to a wide range of feelings, dark and light. Her Mars in earthy Virgo is square her Venus, trine her Moon, sextile her Pluto and inconjunct Uranus – so very get-up-and-go with a huge reservoir of restless energy. Without a peripatetic actor’s lifestyle , allowing her to live out quite destructive emotions on stage, it’s difficult to see how she could have handled that fairly explosive chart. But her home life would always be underpinned by that contented Jupiter in the 4th.
Her actors’ 15th Harmonic is marked; as is her hope-and-faith, destined-for-immortality 17H. Next to her 15H, her stamina-and-stubbornness 8th harmonic is the strongest. Long may she continue.
When I first saw this entry on Dame Judi Dench, I thought it was because she passed away!!! I FROZE. Can’t be too sure these days. Anyway, many more years to her.
I think Judi Dench’s talent is such a blessing for the rest of us! Harvey Weinstein is such a schmoe; what a small world that man lives in. Anyway, your observation of Judi Dench’s ability to access the light and darkness of human nature in her varied performances is so apparent. I loved her child like character in Ladies in Lavender with Maggie Smith. At the other end of the spectrum, Ms. Dench played that horrible obsessive teacher in Notes on a Scandal with Cate Blanchett. She can access both ends of the spectrum of our complicated human natures! Thank goodness she has blessed the rest of us with her ‘troubled soul’. I wish we all could access our darker aspects so effectively!!