Judi Dench is back in the world of espionage — but her latest role is a far cry from James Bond's unflappable spy chief, M.
In "Red Joan," to be released Friday in Britain and the United States, Dench plays an elderly British woman whose quiet suburban life is upended when police come knocking to accuse her of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
An indignant Joan insists she has done nothing wrong. But as she is questioned, flashbacks reveal a complex tale of love, loyalty and misplaced idealism.
Dench played M in seven Bond films, from "Goldeneye" to "Skyfall." She says she is fascinated by spies, who are often first-rate actors.
An enduring source of intrigue for Dench is the "Cambridge Spies," a group of high-ranking British intelligence officers that fed information to the Soviet Union for years. The double agents, who included one-time MI6 counterespionage chief Kim Philby, fended off suspicion with upper-class charm.
"There's some footage of Kim Philby meeting the press at a flat and saying 'Of course I'm not (a spy), you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick,'" Dench told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It's the most wonderful bit of acting you can possibly see." She recommends the clip to young actors for study.
Directed by stage and film veteran Trevor Nunn, "Red Joan" is based on the true story of "Granny Spy" Melita Norwood, a civil servant living in the London suburbs who passed nuclear secrets to Moscow for decades. When she was exposed in 1999 at the age of 87, she expressed no regrets, saying she would do it all again.
The fictional character of the movie's title is Joan Stanley. Played as a young woman by Sophie Cookson, she is a bright physics student in wartime Cambridge who becomes involved with the quest for an atomic bomb, and with a charismatic revolutionary (Tom Hughes).
Dench says Joan is convinced she is acting in the name of peace, by "evening up" the nuclear arms race.
"After Hiroshima she said, if everybody had the same armaments, it wouldn't happen. It would prevent the other side from using them," Dench said.
Then "she just got on with her suburban life, and it obviously hadn't occurred to her that it was an act of treason."
Dench feels some sympathy for Joan's argument. She can recall the early Cold War years, when the horrors of World War II were still fresh and the prospect of nuclear annihilation seemed all too real.
Dench was 5-years-old when war broke out in 1939 and remembers huddling at the bottom of the stairs as her home city of York in northern England was bombed.
As a young actress, she protested against nuclear weapons, though was never a big political activist like some contemporaries.
"I remember sitting in Trafalgar Square during Ban the Bomb, with Vanessa Redgrave," Dench said. "I think Vanessa got arrested and had to say to the police, 'You can't arrest me, I've got a matinee today.'"
Now 84, Dench shows no sign of retiring, though she is picky about the parts she accepts.
"I don't want to play anybody who is my age and is dropping off the perch," she said firmly. "The last thing I want to play is somebody who's being looked after in a care home."
Her recent work defies typecasting. Dench recently played William Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, in Kenneth Branagh's "All is True." Next up, she'll be Old Deuteronomy in Tom Hooper's big-screen adaptation of the musical "Cats."
The film offered Dench the chance to make up for a bit of past bad luck. She was cast in the 1981 stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's feline hit, but had to drop out.
"I snapped my Achilles' tendon, so they delayed the opening," she said. "And then when we went to the New London (theater) to actually open it, I was in plaster and I fell off the stage. So I knew then that my number was up.
"So it was nice to come back in a circle and be part of it. It didn't put me off 'Cats' for life."
Follow Jill Lawless on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
NEW YORK (AP) — Even as many Americans say they learn about the 2024 election campaign from national news outlets, a disquieting poll reveals some serious trust issues.
About half of Americans, 53%, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. Some 42% express worry that news outlets will use generative artificial intelligence to create stories, according to a poll from the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The poll found 47% of Americans also expressing serious concern that news outlets would report information that has not been confirmed or verified, and 44% worry that accurate information will be presented in a way that favors one side or another.
Half of Americans say they get election news always or frequently from national news outlets, a percentage that is higher among older respondents, the poll found.
“The level of engagement is good,” said Michael Bolden, CEO of the American Press Institute. “The thing that's most concerning is that they're not sure they can actually trust the information.”
Years of suspicion about journalists, much of it sown by politicians, is partly responsible, he said. People are also less familiar with how journalism works. The poll found about half of respondents say they have at least a moderate amount of confidence in the information they receive from either national or local news outlets when it comes to the 2024 elections, though only about 1 in 10 say they have a great deal of confidence.
“There may have been a time when people knew a journalist because one lived on their block,” Bolden said. “The way the industry has been decimated, that's much less likely.”
Simply putting out the news often isn't good enough anymore, he said. There's a growing disconnect between news organizations and communities that the outlets need to address, by helping to let people know what journalists do and how people reporting news are their friends and neighbors, he said.
Outlets should lean into a convenor role, bringing people together for newsworthy events, he said.
About half of U.S. adults say they follow the news about presidential elections closely, with older adults being more engaged. About two-thirds of Americans age 60 or older say they keep a close eye on presidential election news, compared wth roughly one-third of those under age 30.
The same trend is seen with local and state election news. While the poll found that 46% of Americans age 60 or older say they follow news about local and state elections closely, only 16% of people age 18 to 29 said the same thing.
“As they transition to becoming older people, will they begin to care?” Bolden asked. “If they don't begin to care, what will that mean for local and state communities?”
Young people, those under age 30, are about as likely to get election news from social media or friends or family as they are to get it from national or local news outlets, the poll found. Black and Latino adults are somewhat more likely to express “a great deal” of confidence in the reliability of social media as a source of election news than white Americans are.
That's both a warning sign, since there is a lot more misinformation to be found on social media, and an opportunity for traditional outlets to make more of their work available this way, Bolden said.
About 6 in 10 Democrats say they get election news from national outlets at least frequently. That's more than the 48% of Republicans or 34% of independents, according to the poll. Republicans are more likely than Democrats and independents to express concern about inaccurate information or misinformation in news coverage during the upcoming elections. About 6 in 10 Republicans are concerned about this, compared with about half of Democrats.
Besides inaccuracies, many also expressed serious concern about election news that focuses too much on division or controversies or concentrates on who may win or lose — the horserace aspect of political coverage — rather than issues or the character of candidates.
Most Americans say that for them to make informed decisions about the 2024 state and local elections, they want national and local news outlets to highlight candidates’ values or their different positions on key social issues. In each case, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say they would like “a lot” or "some" coverage of these topics.
The poll of 2,468 adults was conducted March 21-25, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.
FILE - Journalists line the press stand before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a caucus night party in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2024. Attitudes toward the media and political news ahead of the election were explored in a poll from the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
