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Good things come to those who wait. For Judi Dench that good thing would be movie stardom. She's been acting on stage since 1957 (as Ophelia in Hamlet at the age of 23), on tv since 1959 (the title role in Hilda Lessways), and on the silver screen since 1964 (The Third Secret)...  but it wasn't until 1997/1998 when Dench hit her sixties that true movie stardom happened, prompted by the double whammy of her first Oscar bid (Mrs Brown) and its follow up "oops sorry about last year" Oscar win for Shakespeare in Love (recently discussed). Isn't her career trajectory unheard of? Who doesn't even start being a movie star until their sixties? Dame Judi thats who.

Though she may soon retire (she's turning 80 a year from now) she's still in her movie prime. Her latest starring role is as Philomena, the story of a woman seeking the grown son she gave up for adoption,...

Janet Suzman was one of the giants of the British stage in the 60s and 70s. She might have made it in Hollywood too – if she hadn't looked so good in a tiara

'See Pooh bear up there?" says Janet Suzman, pointing to a little doll on the bookshelf. "That was a present from Judi Dench when Josh was born. Isn't it sweet?" We're sitting in what was once her son's nursery at Suzman's Hampstead home. Now little Josh is Dr Joshua Nunn, 30-year-old father to a seven-month-old daughter. He's a postdoctoral research associate at the cool-sounding Ultrafast Group at Oxford's physics department and is currently researching the field of quantum memories. Perhaps Dr Nunn will tell us some day if quantum memories are like the human ones that suffuse this room – memories of 30-year-old kisses and of bedtime stories read by one of the RSC's most seductive voices, all locked,...