‘A nice little cameo that Judi Dench hasn’t got her paws on’: Joan Plowright’s screen career blossomed with age | Peter Bradshaw

Her film breakthrough in 1960’s The Entertainer was a harbinger of the calmness and strength she brought as a distinguished character actor – and as her lovable self in Nothing Like a Dame

One of Joan Plowright’s greatest screen performances came towards the very end of her career: a gloriously subtle, lovable appearance on Roger Michell’s documentary Nothing Likea Dame from 2018, with four great dames of the British acting profession – Plowright, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith – assembling like Marvel superheroes at the country home that Plowright shared with her late husband Laurence Olivier to drink tea and swap uproarious anecdotes and sharp observations about the acting profession and the sexism they and their younger colleagues continue to face.

The then 89-year-old Plowright, despite her failing health and eyesight, exchanges affectionate badinage with the others: “My agent in America said to me, when he knew I couldn’t do very much because of the eyesight going: ‘Well, if you do want to come over again, we’ll look around for a nice little cameo that Judi Dench hasn’t got her paws on.’” (Dench replies tartly: “How rude!”)

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