They were easily the length of a kayak. And as wide,
Judi Dench said of the massive floral arrangement sent by Vin Diesel to persuade her to join the cast of The Chronicles of Riddick.
The 91-year-old actress revealed that the bouquet was so large that theater staff were unable to carry it up the stairs to her dressing room, leaving it at the stage door of the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
In her new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, published in the U.S. on November 3 by St. Martin’s Press, Dench recounted how the action star used the gesture to secure her role as Aereon, an ambassador capable of gliding through the air, in the 2004 sequel to Pitch Black.
Dench, who was appearing in David Hare’s two-person play The Breath of Life opposite Maggie Smith at the time, admitted she agreed to the film without even reading the script. You can't say no to a man like that, can you?
she joked, adding, I'm cheap as chips, me. Far too easily wooed.
The massive flowers were not the only way leading men have successfully charmed Dench into roles. She noted that Sir Kenneth Branagh utilized a similar tactic when approaching her for his 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Branagh presented her with a personalized silk handkerchief embroidered with the initials of her character, Princess Natalia Dragomiroff.
He must’ve known that’d make me say yes; he’s so sneaky,
Dench said, noting her deep admiration for the director. She joked that her willingness to work with him was so high that even if he had asked her to play a mat on the floor in a production of Three Sisters, her only response would be, When do I start?
The casting of Dench in The Chronicles of Riddick was driven by Diesel, though director David Twohy noted that the role of Aereon could have been played by a man or a woman.
Twohy, who made a point of watching Dench perform whenever he was in London, also revealed that the production used small blue dots on Dench’s face to allow visual effects artists to track her movements in three dimensions.
Dench’s experience on the set in Vancouver included some unexpected wardrobe changes. While she was initially pleased with a costume featuring long white hair and blue contact lenses, she arrived on her first day to find a shorter, puffier wig that she felt made her resemble Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.
Although she eventually regained the long wig, the blue contact lenses were not replaced, leading the actress to joke in her memoir that Diesel might have helped himself to them.
