In her new memoir *Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?*, co-written with Welsh actor and director Brendan O'Hea, 91-year-old Judi Dench directly addresses long-running rumors that she and the late Maggie Smith feuded over theater hierarchy and dressing-room placement. Both E!

News and Yahoo/People report that Dench dismisses the speculation outright, saying there was no bad blood between the pair and that they remained friends until Smith's death at age 89 in 2024.

Asked about actors developing rifts over dressing-room allocations, Dench reportedly replied, "Don't be ridiculous." Responding to the broader gossip, she added, "What's the matter with people? Haven't they got enough to worry about with the play? I never mind where I am."

The book, out now, revisits their shared history at London's Haymarket Theatre, including Dressing Room 10 during their 2002 run of *The Breath of Life*.

According to Yahoo, carrying People's reporting, the rumor centered on Dressing Room 10 at the Haymarket Theatre, a space Dench calls particularly "exquisite."

Dench explains she used it only because Smith, whom she affectionately calls Mags, preferred the smaller Dressing Room 1 because it was nearer the stage and saved her climbing stairs. E!

News notes that despite the friendship, Dench doubts the two could ever have shared a dressing room: "We're too different. Mags would prefer to sit in a corner, quietly reading, whereas I need the hustle and bustle of people coming in and out of the room—the hubbub and the chat and the tannoy turned up to full."

The detail that a lifelong friendship survived decades of shared billing makes the feud narrative look, per both outlets, like pure invention.

Both E! News and Yahoo report that Dench met Smith in 1958 at the Old Vic in Waterloo, London, where the two started out as young actresses and performed onstage together.

They went on to share the screen in *A Room With a View*, *Tea With Mussolini*, *Ladies in Lavender*, and the 2018 documentary *Nothing Like a Dame*.

Dench describes Smith as "a very complex person — intensely private, and I suspect quite lonely at times," yet says her lasting memory of the *Lady in the Van* star "is one of unadulterated joy and laughter."

She praises Smith's "ferocious intelligence, an acerbic wit," her striking youthful red hair, and notes "there wasn't an ounce of vanity about her."

News and Yahoo, is Dench's admission that she is still mourning Smith two years after her death. "God, I miss her," Dench writes.

"I sometimes go to pick up the phone, thinking I must give her a ring, just to hear her voice, and I realize she's no longer there." Per E! *Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?* is available now wherever books are sold, per Yahoo.