Is Dame Judi The Greatest Actor Ever?

Judi-Dench-007Dame Judi Dench has been dubbed the “greatest actor ever” by the Stage newspaper. I like silly polls as much as the next obsessive, but this one’s even more inane than usual. Why? Because it’s impossible to compare the dead (Burbage, Bernhardt, Duse) to the living (Dench, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep), and because what is considered great in one era (stagy playing to the balcony) is not considered great acting in another (subdued naturalism).

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