By Bethany Minelle, entertainment reporter

Dame Judi Dench and Sir Trevor Nunn go way back.

The acclaimed director and actress worked together at both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, and are now reunited for the big screen.

Dench plays the title role in Nunn's wartime thriller Red Joan, inspired by a novel based on the real-life case of scientist Melita Norwood.

Nunn admits he had Dench in mind from the off.

"While I was reading I was thinking 'Oh my God what a wonderful part for my mate Judi to play the older Joan. And when I put it to her she was immediately interested."

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After whizzing through the novel in just one weekend, Nunn wrote to author Jennie Rooney to ask for permission to turn it into a movie.

Telling the story of Joan Stanley – from her student years in Cambridge in 1938 to her later years in 2000 – it makes use of flashbacks to show actress Sophie Cookson in the role of young Joan.

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Nunn says Cookson's similarities to Dench made her the perfect choice.

"The gorgeously delightful thing about working with young Sophie Cookson is that she is absolutely as outrageous and mischievous and larky off-screen as Judi is.

"I kept being reminded of Judi's behaviour all those years ago when we first met. Judi is wonderfully mischievous she's got the most extraordinary naughty sense of humour.

Image: Dench plays the title role in Nunn's wartime thriller Red Joan. Pic: Red Joan, Lionsgate

"Sophie is terribly similar in that respect."

Nunn's 1979 stage production of Macbeth, starring Dench as Lady Macbeth opposite Sir Ian McKellen's Macbeth was widely acclaimed.

But the chance for Dench to play a very different role for Nunn a few years later was unexpectedly snatched away.

Speaking about his 1981 world premiere of musical Cats, the director explains: "Very few people know that Judi was also in the original cast of the musical Cats.

"She was passionate to play a cat.

"And when eventually the material about the character Grizabella emerged, Judi was going to do that.

"But then a terrible accident happened late on in rehearsal and Judi snapped her Achilles tendon and she was taken to hospital. Even though we postponed she wasn't able to do it.

"It's very extraordinary that Judi is in the upcoming film of Cats."

Nunn isn't involved in the movie adaptation, which is due out later this year, and says he thinks it will be very different to his stage version.

"I know it's not being based at all on the staging and the choreography.

And therefore to some extent I would say not on the characters that we developed in the original show.

"I don't know how it is being done, only how it isn't."

Sophie Cookson in the role of young Joan.
Image: Sophie Cookson pictured in the role of young Joan. Pic: Red Joan, Lionsgate

Indeed, very little is known about the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical other than the host of stars attached to the production, and the fact that the cats will be the actual size of cats in the movie.

But how different is it to direct a film from a play?

Nunn of all people would know, having directed the entire Shakespeare canon for the stage as well as six movies.

A veteran of theatre, he says he "absolutely loves working in cinema" and has had "wonderful experiences" in the genre.

"I love that process of being with the camera and 15 people of incredible expertise in every single department are all concentrating on capturing the next 30 seconds of your movie.

"You concentrate on it and eventually you say 'OK that's it that's it, we'veRead More – Source

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