Judi Dench says late husband Michael Williams’ ghost visits her at home

Dame Judi Dench says she will never get over her late husband of 30 years, Michael Williams, and imagines he occasionally still visits her at their home.

Dame Judi, who is now dating conservationist David Mills, admits: “I suspect I shall never ever get over Mikey.”

Speaking about her grief, the 85-year-old continued: “It changes who you are altogether, I think. Because it’s like you’re walking along, and suddenly you’re not looking and there’s an enormous chasm in front of you.

“Unexpected kinds of things happen. Suddenly, you’ll walk in somewhere and there’s a photograph or something. I don’t expect you ever get used to it.

“Sometimes the door in this house just opens and I think that he’s just wandered in.”

Dame Judi and Michael moved to a 17th-century house with a six acre estate in Wasp Green, Surrey in 1995, where she now has a tree dedicated to him as part of her memorial forest on the grounds.

Asked how long it took her to work out how to be OK without her husband, Dame Judi responded: “I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve never done that, quite.”

Both actors, the couple starred together in 1980s sitcom, A Fine Romance, as well as in several stage productions after first meeting in a pub on Drury Lane when they both worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

They also both appeared in the 1999 Franco Zeffirelli film, Tea With Mussolini.

Michael would frequently say his talents did not match his wife’s, though he said: “I never feel inferior as a person. And there are some things I can do a damn sight better than Jude.”

Speaking about their happy union, which she says was down to “luck”, Dame Judi describes: “I don’t think we ever had to work at it.

“I mean, sometimes. Mikey used to have black dog days, sometimes. But he was the most unselfish man, and he wouldn’t ever attribute that to anything that might be between us…

“Oh, God, how he used to make me laugh. He used to make me absolutely howl.

“We had a lovely time. It was never a tricky time. I was lucky to meet Mike.”

Dame Judi recalls how Michael flew out to Australia while she was performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and her friend Charlie Thomas passed away.

“We were all in a very, very bad way,” says Dame Judi. “Mike got a plane and flew out to see us all. It was a saving grace, really.

“Then he said, ‘Will you marry me?’ and I said ‘Will you please ask me on a rainy day in Battersea?’ Then it would feel real. So that’s what happened.”

The couple wed in 1971, and were together until Michael died three weeks before their 30th wedding anniversary in 2001.

He died at their home “surrounded by family and friends”, following a long battle with lung cancer.

Shortly before Michael’s death, the couple’s only child together, daughter Finty Williams, now 47, and her son, 23-year-old Sam, moved in, along with various animals, including, as actress Finty described: “A dog, six cats, two goldfish, ducks and moorhens, and a hamster called Biscuit.”

Dame Judi met her partner David in 2010, when she opened a red squirrel enclosure at the British Wildlife Centre, which he runs, near her home.

She refers to him as “my chap” rather than her boyfriend.

“He’s about four miles away,” Dame Judi says. “And that’s just lovely because we laugh about the same things.”

Dame Judi described how she “loathes” being called a National Treasure, telling David Tennant’s podcast that the phrase reminds her of “something very, very dusty, behind a glass, in a corner”.

She added: “I don’t want to be a relic.”

The actress is adamant she will never retire, but says: “My eyesight is so bad now that that’s quite tricky. I have ways of learning things.

“As long as I’ve got enough time to prepare, I’ve got great friends who help me with lines and things.”

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