Jeffery Danny Dench (29 April 1928 – 27 March 2014) was an English actor, best known for his work with the
Royal Shakespeare Company. He was the older brother of actress
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress. Regarded as one of Britain's best actresses, she is noted for her versatile work in various films and television programmes encompassing several genres, as well as for her ...
.
Personal life
Jeffery Dench was born in
Tyldesley
Tyldesley () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, it is north of Chat Moss near the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, southeast of Wigan ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
to Eleanora Olive (née Jones), a native of
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a physician who met his future wife while studying medicine at
Trinity College, Dublin. Jeff lived in Tyldesley with his brother Peter; later the family moved to
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
where his sister,
Judith, was born.
Dench attended
St Peter's, York, where he began acting with the role of
Cleopatra in
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
's ''
Caesar and Cleopatra''.
. It was here that he met Betty, his first wife, who was working as a
. He moved to
in 1963, where he worked for many years.
With his wife Betty, Dench had three daughters: Sarah, a teacher who lives in
.
Betty died from a heart attack on 11 January 2002. Dench then married Ann Curtis, a costume designer for the RSC and a longtime family friend. They lived in
and in 2012 he became the President of Stratford-upon-Avon Choral Society.
On 27 March 2014 it was announced that Jeffery Dench had died. Writing after his death, Sylvia Morris said:
The RSC's artistic director, Gregory Doran, said he was, "the kind of actor that made the RSC what it is: he did not necessarily always play the leading roles, but proved by his presence that the company’s vitality lies in its strength in depth".
accessed 19 March 2016.