Judi Dench once received a bouquet so enormous that it couldn’t be brought up to her dressing room. The extravagant floral delivery came from Vin Diesel, who hoped to persuade the legendary actress to join his 2004 sci-fi film, The Chronicles of Riddick.
At 91, Dench looked back on the memorable encounter and admitted that Diesel’s grand gesture worked. However, he wasn’t the only celebrated actor who discovered that a thoughtful gift could win her over. Kenneth Branagh also had a clever trick when he recruited her for Murder on the Orient Express.
How Vin Diesel persuaded Judi Dench to join The Chronicles of Riddick
During a conversation with her memoir co-author, Brendan O’Hea, for Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, Dench recalled Diesel’s visit to London’s Haymarket Theatre. The actor arrived to discuss the role, but his flowers made an impression first.
“He came to see me at the Haymarket Theatre to ask if I’d be in The Chronicles of Riddick. Before he arrived, he sent me such a massive bunch of flowers. They couldn’t get them up the stairs to my dressing room, so they had to leave them at the stage door,” Dench shared, according to PEOPLE.
She described the bouquet as “easily the length of a kayak. And as wide.” The actress then joked, “You can’t say no to a man like that, can you?” She added, “I’m cheap as chips, me. Far too easily wooed.”
The gesture helped secure her role as Aereon, an ethereal alien ambassador who guided Diesel’s Richard B. Riddick into battle. Dench starred alongside Colm Feore, Thandiwe Newton, Karl Urban, and Alexa Davalos.
Branagh, meanwhile, took a more personal approach when he invited her to join the cast of 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express. Dench recalled receiving “the most wonderful embroidered handkerchief” bearing her character’s initials.
“He must’ve known that’d make me say yes; he’s so sneaky,” she said. Dench added that she would do anything for Branagh, even play “a mat on the floor in Three Sisters.”
The film’s cast also included Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, and Derek Jacobi. Dench played Princess Natalia Dragomiroff, though she wasn’t particularly fond of the character.
“Don’t ask me anything about her. She was some old broad who sat around with a lot of jewelry and a couple of Shih Tzus — one black, one white,” she told O’Hea.
