Judith Olivia Dench was born in December 1934 in York to English GP Reginald and Irish mother Olave, both keen amateur actors. She grew up with two brothers and was educated at the Quaker Mount School in the city. Dr Dench was the company GP at York's Theatre Royal and his enthralled small daughter would accompany him on his visits. Her first stage appearance was as a snail in a school performance, but she soon came out of her shell and went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. One of her earliest stage roles was as Ophelia in the Old Vic's 1957 Liverpool production of Hamlet. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961 and, three years later, made her big-screen debut in The Third Secret.

Her parents were fiercely proud of their daughter. In 1960-61 she played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo And Juliet at the Old Vic. One of her lines was: "Where are my father and my mother, nurse?" Her father replied: "Here we are, darling, in Row H."

Among countless awards is a Golden Globe for her sax appeal in the role of a member of an all-girl swing band in BBC TV's The Last Of The Blonde Bombshells and she's a five-times Bafta winner, including Best Actress for A Fine Romance. In 1999 she won her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her eight-minute role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love and was also nominated for her role in Chocolat.

She made her debut as a film director in 1988 with Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Company in Much Ado About Nothing, and made history in 1996 when she became the first person to carry off two Olivier Awards in the same year - Best Actress for Absolute Hell and Best Actress in a Musical for A Little Night Music. She became the new M for 007 and Bond star Pierce Brosnan has called her "the ultimate Bond girl".

The elfin Dame Judi is tiny in stature at 5ft 1in but is a colossus on the world stage, although she retains an inherent modesty and self-deprecation.When Peter Hall asked her to play Cleopatra in Antony And Cleopatra for the RSC in 1987, she initially refused, saying her Cleopatra would be "a menopausal dwarf". She subsequently delivered an award-winning performance.

Her husky voice, with its distinctive catch, led one theatre to put up a notice saying that she was not ill: "She just talks like this."

The legendary Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise gave centre stage to her versatility when she joined them for one of their top-rated shows in 1968.

Two years later, she was awarded an OBE and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1988.

She married Michael in 1971 and they had a daughter, actress Finty, who played one of Queen Victoria's children in Mrs Brown. She has a grandson, Sam.