Dame Judi Dench, who has previously condemned the alleged sex crimes of both disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Kevin Spacey, has a contradictory opinion about their respective work.
“What kind of agony is that?” Dench asked in a recent interview with Radio Times, a British magazine. “Are we going to negate 10 years at the Old Vic [Spacey served as the London theater’s artistic director] and everything that he did — how wonderful he’s been in all those films? Are we just not going to see all those films that Harvey produced?
“You cannot deny somebody a talent,” she continued, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “You might as well never look at a Caravaggio painting [the artist was convicted of murder]. You might as well never have gone to see Noel Coward [accused of harassment].”
The 84-year-old actress commented on Spacey’s virtual shunning from Hollywood when the scenes he appeared in were edited out of the 2017 film All the Money in the World. She described him as a “good friend” and “a inestimable comfort” to her after the death of her husband in 2001, according to THR.
“I can’t approve, in any way, of the fact — whatever he has done — that you then start to cut him out of films,” she told the BBC after the news of Spacey’s removal from the Ridley Scott film broke last year. “I don’t know about any of the conditions of it, but nevertheless I think he is, and was, a most wonderful actor … and a good friend.”
Dench, who starred in the Weinstein-produced Shakespeare in Love and who credited him for much of her Hollywood career, previously said that what he has been accused of in the #MeToo era has been “horrifying.”
“Whilst there is no doubt that Harvey Weinstein has helped and championed my film career for the past 20 years,” she said in a statement to Newsweek in 2017, “I was completely unaware of these offenses which are, of course, horrifying, and I offer my sympathy to those who have suffered, and wholehearted support to those who have spoken out.”
Editor’s Note: RealClearLife, a news and lifestyle publisher, is now a part of InsideHook. Together, we’ll be covering current events, pop culture, sports, travel, health and the world. Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
