Cats: Judi Dench says she looked like a ‘battered, mangy old cat’ in disastrous flop

Actor said the cloak she was made to wear looked ‘like five foxes f***ing on my back’

Judi Dench has confessed she was not a fan of her costume in Cats.

When Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of the musical came out in 2019, it was widely ridiculed for its bizarre use of CGI and was a box office flop.

The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote that the film was “one of those rare cinematic events that feels like a collective hallucination”.

Dench’s performance in the film as wise cat Old Deuteronomy, meanwhile, has been described as the “most convincing and entertaining part of Cats… she still looks entirely deranged, it should be said, but that’s by-the-by.”

In a new interview with Vogue, Dench said she was perplexed by her appearance in the film. While she had expected to look elegant, she said she instead ended up as “a battered, mangy old cat. A great big orange bruiser. What’s that about?”

Dench was equally horrified by the cloak she was made to wear, adding it was “like five foxes f***ing on my back”.

In March, Dench responded to the news that she had been nominated for a Razzie award for Cats by saying: “Oh, am I? That would be good. As far as I know, that’s a first.”

Dench’s Cats co-star James Corden, whose character coughs up a furball into the face of Ray Winstone, gave an interview last year in which he said he hadn’t seen Cats but “heard it’s terrible”.

At the age of 85, Dench is the oldest person ever to appear on the cover of British Vogue.

She rejected the suggestion that she is nearing retirement, scolding the interviewer with: “Don’t use that word…. Wash your mouth out.”

Dench, who played M in the James Bond franchise, also reiterated her belief that a woman should not be cast as the spy. “I don’t think Ian Fleming would want a female Bond," she said.