I got a word wrong... it was exquisite agony I'm surprised I wasn't sacked

She starred in Shakespeare in Love and Dame Judi Dench has been besotted with the Bard her whole career.

- - MARC BAKER

The high points include her stage debut in 1957 as Hamlet's Ophelia, and an acclaimed run as Cleopatra to Sir Anthony Hopkins' Mark Antony.

"Every night, he used to die in my lap, Dame Judi recalls. "After he died on stage, he used to whisper to me, 'Now, I am going for a nice cup of tea, and that would be the whole of act five." But when she looks back on her career, sometimes it is the rare bloopers which stick in the memory.

Ahead of a documentary which examines whether one of her distant ancestors met Shakespeare himself, she says: "I love Shakespeare, but I have fallen over in nearly every play. It is something to do with my balance.

"And I have had bad reviews. Once when I played Juliet, one critic wrote 'she conveyed about as much as an apple in a Warwickshire orchard'.

"I remember when I played Portia in The Merchant of Venice at Stratford-upon-Avon with my husband Michael [Williams], I got one of the words wrong in the script and ended up saying erection.

"We had a wind band about to play on stage and they left as they were embarrassed. It was exquisite agony. I was surprised I did not get the sack.

"Also, my wig flew off one night when I was in Twelfth Night. It was a very dark wig with a head-dress attached and it just went flying" ow 91, Dame Judi's eyesight is sadly failing her due to macular degeneration, and she finds it hard to either learn a script or take in a play herself.

She says: "When I go the theatre, I can't see. Hopeless.