Lady Judi Dench received her eighth Oscar nomination this year for her role as a grandmother in Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Belfast,’ a performance that proved she’s still a tremendous acting talent. Even at the age of 87 and having won nearly every accolade imaginable for an actress, Dench isn’t even thinking about retirement.

“I only slow down to the extent that I can’t read scripts,” Dench said. The Sunday Times in a colorful new interview. “But I will find a way.”

While reflecting on his sixty-year career, Dench laughed at the improbability of his rise to movie stardom. At an audition in the 1960s, she was told she would never do a movie because, in the words of a casting director, “you have the wrong face”. But Dench didn’t let his harsh comments get him down. She responded by saying, “It’s okay, I don’t like movies anyway. I want to go back to the theatre.

His initial preference for acting stemmed from a desire to continually work on his characters night after night. While she came to love working in film, Dench said she wished she had the opportunity to enhance some of her film performances like she would with a stage role.

“The problem with filmmaking is that you don’t try another time,” she said. “There are a lot of my movies that I’ve never seen and I don’t want to because I’d just be irritated.”

This perfectionism is what drives her to continue to surpass herself as an actress. She’s set to follow up her Oscar-nominated “Belfast” performance by starring in “Allelujah,” Richard Eyre’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play of the same name. That film will be released later this year, and Dench is already considering future roles. No matter how successful, the star is always worried about becoming complacent.

“You can do something that’s a hit and then for the next thing you could go ass on tit,” she said. “You can never take it for granted and it’s just that we don’t.”

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