Alan Bennett Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Judi Dench was in good spirits as she posed alongside Jennifer Saunders at the European premiere of movie Allelujah during the 66th BFI London Film Festival at the Southbank Centre on Sunday. The actress, 87, showcased her chic sense of style in all black attire as she draped an elaborately patterned black and gold scarf over her shoulder. Fellow screen star Jennifer, 64, looked stylish in a black pinstripe suit, with the star wearing a long red and blue scarf to add a splash of colour to her look.

Director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett are collaborating again, with The Lady in the Van, The History Boys and The Madness of King George duo set to team on The Choral, which will star Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent and Simon Russell Beale. Production begins in May in Yorkshire, according to Sony Pictures Classics, which said Wednesday that it has acquired all worldwide rights to the pic.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost 30 years since iconic British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances came to an end, with the irreverent comedy still holding a firm place in many TV watchers hearts. The popular BBC show ran from 1990 to 1995 and featured Dame Patricia Routlegede in the title role of Hyacinth Bucket.The snobbish central character soon became a firm fan favourite, particularly for her insistence that her surname Bucket was actually pronounced “Bouquet”in an attempt to make herself sound more refined.

Former Coronation Street star Charlie De Melo has said its been 'torture' as he was finally able to speak out on his next TV role. Fans of the ITV soap will remember the actor for playing Imran Habeeb in the ITV soap from 2017 until his exit last year (2022).

Friends, Frasier, Ellen, 3rd Rock from the Sun and The Drew Carey Show. But it was the recurring role of Hal Conway in Mad About You for which he was best known by TV viewers. He played the wife of Judy Geeson’s Maggie in nine episodes.

Paxton Whitehead, the prolific and acclaimed actor whose career stretched from 17 Broadway productions, a recurring role on the hit 1990s sitcom Mad About You and a memorable turn as a snooty professor who takes an instant disliking to Rodney Dangerfield’s crude self-made man in 1986’s Back To School, died June 16 at a hospital in Arlington, VA. He was 85.

Barry Humphries, the Australian entertainer best known for performing as Dame Edna Everage, has died. A spokesman for the hospital where he was being treated has confirmed that the comic passed away today, Saturday, April 22.

Reports that Australian entertainer Barry Humphries is in an "unresponsive" state at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney have been denied by the hospital. Multiple local media outlets had previously reported on Thursday that Barry had suffered complications following hip surgery and was unresponsive, receiving morphine from doctors.

Dame Judi Dench claims that her eyesight is getting so bad that she is struggling to continue acting.

A heartbreaking update. Judi Dench revealed that her eyesight is making it difficult for her to memorize scripts for new roles.

Dame Judi Dench now finds it «impossible» to read scripts. The 88-year-old actress is a guest on Friday's episode of The Graham Norton Show and expresses her difficulty with reading scripts due to her deteriorating eyesight. Dench says she has a «photographic memory» and wants to find a machine that is able to teach her her lines and also locate them on the page. The Oscar winner previously revealed she has macular degeneration, which causes the gradual loss of vision. In 2012, she told ET about her condition, after a report claimed she was fighting to save her eyesight. "​​In response to the numerous articles in the media concerning my eye condition — macular degeneration- I do not wish for this to be overblown," she said. «This condition is something that thousands and thousands of people all over the world are having to contend with...and it's something I have learnt to cope with and adapt to — and it will not lead to blindness.»A decade later, Dench tells host Graham Norton things have changed.

Chatting away to Sally Hawkins, as you do, in the fabled Abbey Road Studios in posh North London neighborhood of St. John’s Wood, she tells me ”I feel fine” when I inquire after her well-being.

The brother of Moors Murders victim Keith Bennett has spoken of his 'anger and pain' in an increasingly bitter row with an author who sparked a new police dig for the child's remains.

Naman Ramachandran MetFilm Sales has acquired worldwide sales rights, excluding the U.K., to filmmaker Margy Kinmonth’s feature documentary “Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War.” Written, directed and produced by Kinmonth, executive produced by Maureen Murray and made by Foxtrot Films, the film is the true story of one of Britain’s greatest landscape artists. Eric Ravilious was the first war artist to die in WWII. Set against the wartime locations that inspired him, the film brings to life the undervalued British artist. Made in co-operation with Imperial War Museums, the documentary unfolds in Ravilious’ own words, through previously unseen private correspondence and rare archive film. Shot entirely on location in the U.K., Portugal and Ireland, the film features contributions from Ai Weiwei, Alan Bennett, Grayson Perry, Robert Macfarlane, Freddy Fox and Tamsin Greig.

Nothing has illustrated the current turmoil in British politics quite as starkly as the recent tanking of the pound against the dollar, a puzzle even to the ruling party whose prime minister and chancellor caused it. Richard Eyre’s fitfully funny Allelujah reflects this schism in more ways than one, balancing broad grey-pound comedy and seriously macabre drama with the result that a seemingly gentle satire inexplicably dives into a murky existential abyss in its final act. Even fans of Alan Bennett, the famously folksy playwright and national treasure of the north, will struggle with the juxtaposition of wry bathos and savagery, the latter ramped up from Allelujah’s original incarnation as a Bennett stage play sprinkled with Dennis Potter-style song-and-dance numbers.

Toronto International Film Festival.Unless, of course, you holler, “Allelujah! It’s time to go home!”That’s because the dinky drama, about a struggling hospital for the elderly in England, gets steadily more depressing as it plods along. There’s nothing wrong with some silver screen sorrow, but not when it amounts to indecisive mush. Sure, it is a pleasure to see the boffo acting talent together — Jennifer Saunders, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and more — but they deserve so much better than hospital Jell-O. The creaky film began as a play at London’s Bridge Theatre by writer Alan Bennett, who also penned “The History Boys,” and much like the 2006 screen version of that show, “Allelujah,” directed by Richard Eyre, doesn’t comfortably make the leap to cinema.

TORONTO – Sometimes films with the best intentions just doesn’t come together. A great cast, a notable filmmaker, and fine source material don’t always coalesce.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Allelujah,” Richard Eyre’s latest film, unfolds in a Yorkshire geriatric hospital, following a group of patients as they make peace with or rage against the indignities of old age. It’s a story that resonates with Eyre, a legendary stage and screen director. “I’m about to be 80,” he says. “So old age isn’t my consuming passion, but it’s a subject that has been forced on me and that has become difficult to ignore. I’m acutely aware of having outlived both my parents and many of my friends.” Perhaps unwittingly, “Allelujah,” which premieres this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, also serves as a showcase for a generation of English actors such as Judi Dench, David Bradley, and Derek Jacobi, who have all entered their ninth decades.

Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough, 2 September-1 October. At the National Theatre in 2019, Inua Ellams adapted Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, transposing its drama to the Biafran war with virtuosity. Now he turns to Sophoclean tragedy with this play in the Theban cycle about rebel children, tyrant kings and divine interventions.

If you’re a theatre buff, or just looking for a great evening out, Altrincham Garrick Playhouse has plenty to offer.

Gordon Cox Theater EditorA place for everything and everything in its place. Although that maxim about neatness might apply to the intentions of the characters living in the English country vicarage in “The Southbury Child,” it’s actually better as a description of the way Stephen Beresford’s all-too-orderly new play (now running at the Bridge Theatre in London) is written.

Former Coronation Street star Charlie De Melo has confirmed the first role he'll be taking on following his exit from the ITV soap. Fans said a sad goodbye to Imran Habeeb earlier this month.

Stars of the stage and screen have made heartfelt tributes to David Johnson - the man who inspired generations to perform. Through Oldham Theatre Workshop, which he founded in 1968, David helped to kickstart the careers of a string of household names.

Depending on which side of the pond you are depends on how you best know James Corden. For some, the actor will forever be known as the iconic Smithy, who loved nothing better than lounging around in tracksuits and causing chaos. For others, James is better known as being chatshow royalty, interviewing the most famous celebs on his Late Late Show.

in Corrie to picking up awards for their acting roles since departing the famous cobbles. READ MORE: Let's take a look back and raise a toast to the sparkling ladies who have set the bar high.

in Corrie from 1991 to 1996 and briefly made a return in 2000, was recently starred as troubled mum Gwen in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series. "YOUNG SARAH LANCASHIRE HERE SHE IS," shouted one fan about Cath.Introducing the monologue she said: "I’m so lucky.

David Benedict “Of course, they’ve picked this all up off the television.” Antiques-shop owner Celia (Kristin Scott Thomas) is as dismissive as she is amusingly sniffy about her customers who, versed in the lingo of Antiques Roadshow and other TV staples, affect to know the tricks of the trade.

in Corrie from 1991 to 1996 and briefly made a return in 2000, returned to our screens on Tuesday night as troubled mum Gwen in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series.In the monologue An Ordinary Woman Gwen tells how she's struggling to get to get to grips with her incestuous feelings towards her 15-year-old boy Michael.At one point in the dark monologue, now available to view on BBC iPlayer, she tells how her son suspects her of having an affair, not realising that her new hairdo, lipstick and

Killing Eve star Jodie Comer has revealed fellow Liverpudlian Stephen Graham convinced her not to lose her Scouse accent.

Talking Heads.The Killing Eve star will be one of several artists taking part, performing the one-person pieces separately.The revival was imagined with social distancing in mind, as cast members filmed their segments individually at Elstree Studios in London.Comer will be starring in ‘Her Big Chance’, focusing on Lesley, an aspiring actress in West Germany who secures what she thinks is her big break.Her monologue, however, reveals what she has signed onto is a pornographic film, unwittingly.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorThe BBC has released first-look images of the cast of Talking Heads, a coronavirus-inspired reimagining of Alan Bennett’s BAFTA-winning series of dramatic monologues.Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer, Sherlock star Martin Freeman and the soon-to-be star of The Crown Imelda Staunton are among those attached to the project, which premieres June 23 before the full series is dropped on iPlayer.The 12-part season was produced by the London Theatre Company on

With Killing Eve season three currently airing we have been reminded of just how much we love Jodie Comer.

The BBC is remaking Alan Bennett's critically acclaimed and award-winning monologue series Talking Heads, which the U.K. public broadcaster first aired in 1988 and 1998, with shooting now underway under social distancing guidelines.

By Tim Dams

By Jake Kanter

Jeremy Irons, Tilda Swinton and Hilary Mantel are collaborating to read Coleridge’s most famous poem.