[19] She applied and was accepted by the Central School, then based at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where she was a classmate of Vanessa Redgrave, graduating and being awarded four acting prizes, including the Gold Medal as Outstanding Student.

That same year, she made her film debut in The Third Secret, before featuring in a small role in the Sherlock Holmes thriller A Study in Terror (1965) with her Nottingham Playhouse colleague John Neville.

After a long run in Cabaret, Dench rejoined the RSC, making numerous appearances with the company in Stratford and London for nearly twenty years, winning several "best actress" awards.

Its small round stage focused attention on the psychological dynamics of the characters, and both Ian McKellen in the title role, and Dench, received exceptionally favourable notices.

[28] She had a romantic role in the BBC television film Langrishe, Go Down (1978), with Jeremy Irons and a screenplay by Harold Pinter from the Aidan Higgins novel, directed by David Jones, in which she played one of three spinster sisters living in a fading Irish mansion in the County Waterford countryside.

The film dramatizes a delightful and tender correspondence, of the same title, between American writer, Helene Hanff and British bookshop manager, Frank Doel, which began after WWII, in 1949, and ended in 1969.

[40] In 2011, while accepting a British Film Institute Award in London, Dench commented that the project launched her Hollywood career and joked that "it was thanks to Harvey, whose name I have had tattooed on my bum".

[40] The same year, she co-starred along with Cher, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, and Lily Tomlin in Franco Zeffirelli's semi-autobiographical period drama Tea with Mussolini which tells the story of young Italian boy Luca's upbringing by a circle of British and American women, before and during World War II.

This film portrayed M in a larger role with the villain, Renard, coming back to haunt her when he engineers the murder of her old friend Sir Robert King and seemingly attempts to kill his daughter Elektra.

[40] In 2002, Dench was cast opposite Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Reese Witherspoon in Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest, a comedy about mistaken identity set in English high society during the Victorian Era.

Based on Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners of the same name, she portrayed Lady Bracknell, a role she had repeatedly played before, including a stint at the Royal National Theatre in 1982.

Selected by Diesel, who prompted writers to re-create the character to fit a female persona because he wanted to work with the actress,[56] she called filming "tremendous fun", although she "had absolutely no idea what was going on in the plot".

In the film, Dench plays one half of a sister duo and takes it upon herself to nurse a washed up stranger to health, eventually finding herself falling for a man many decades younger than she.

The specialty release garnered positive reviews from critics, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "perfectly sweet and civilized [and] a pleasure to watch Smith and Dench together; their acting is so natural it could be breathing".

In Walt Disney's Home on the Range, she, along with Roseanne Barr and Jennifer Tilly, voiced a mismatched trio of dairy cows who must capture an infamous cattle rustler, for his bounty, in order to save their idyllic farm from foreclosure.

[68] Dench appeared opposite Cate Blanchett as a London teacher with a dedicated fondness for vulnerable women in Richard Eyre's 2006 drama film Notes on a Scandal, an adaption from the 2003 novel of the same name by Zoë Heller.

[40] Dench, as Miss Matty Jenkyns, co-starred with Eileen Atkins, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, and Francesca Annis in the BBC One five-part series Cranford.

[76] The project received mixed reviews from critics, who mainly felt that Quantum of Solace was not as impressive as the predecessor Casino Royale,[77] but became another hit for the franchise with a worldwide gross of US$591 million.

[80] The same year, she appeared in Sally Potter's experimental film Rage, a project that featured 14 actors playing fictional figures in and around the fashion world, giving monologues before a plain backdrop.

[82] Also starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, and Sophia Loren, she played Lilli La Fleur, an eccentric but motherly French costume designer, who performs the song "Folies Bergères" in the film.

[84] In July 2010, Dench performed "Send in the Clowns" at a special celebratory promenade concert from the Royal Albert Hall as part of the proms season, in honour of composer Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday.

In the 12-minute comedy, directed by My Week with Marilyn assistant director Chris Foggin on a budget of just £5,000, she portrays a pensioner grappling with a crush on her church choirmaster and the art of cyber-flirting via social networking.

[104] In 2013, Dench starred as the title character in the Stephen Frears-directed film Philomena, which was inspired by true events of a woman looking for the son whom, half a century earlier, the Catholic Church had taken from her.

[112] On her performance, Telegraph's Michael Hogan commented: "We've grown accustomed to seeing Dench in forbidding roles, but here, she recalled her footloose, flirtatious side, displayed in sitcoms as A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By.

In 2016, Dench made Olivier Award history when she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her rôle as Paulina in The Winter's Tale, breaking her own record with her eighth win as a performer.

[119] The same year, she was cast alongside Eva Green and Asa Butterfield in Tim Burton's dark fantasy film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

[142] She also appeared as a headmistress alongside Eddie Izzard, Carla Juri, and James D'Arcy in Andy Goddard's war drama film Six Minutes to Midnight (2020) about a discovery at a school for the daughters of the Nazi elite that leads to a series of deadly events.

[149][150] In October 2021, it was announced that Dench would be joining the cast of Allelujah, a film adaptation of Alan Bennett's play of the same name directed by Richard Eyre, which will also star Jennifer Saunders, Russell Tovey, David Bradley, and Derek Jacobi.

[154][155] In March 2023, it was announced that Dench would be appearing in a one-off show at that year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, discussing her life and career with Gyles Brandreth, and would also sing and perform excerpts from her past works.

[182] In a 2022 opinion piece for The Times, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Dench expressed criticism of the Netflix show The Crown, accusing it of "crude sensationalism" and being "cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent," as well as having the potential to mislead non-British viewers through dramatic license.