Dame Judi Dench will never retire

According to the Daily Mirror, she said: "I am so bored of the question. You retire in order to walk, paint or travel. All those things. Well, I get to do that. I am doing the job that I would retire to do."

Judi also revealed her shock when she was approached by a James Bond fan while in the depths of the Borneo rainforest earlier this year.

The star - who played the formidable M in the spy franchise - said: "I was in Borneo in March and people only seem to know about James Bond. I had photographs taken with people who owned crocodiles - because of Bond. Nothing else, but Bond. It is kind of worldwide isn't it?"

Judi previously insisted that the word retirement isn't in her vocabulary.

She said: "It doesn't frustrate me, it maddens me! I say that it's not in my vocabulary, retirement. And if I can't do one thing, then I'll learn something new.

"There are all sorts of things that I don't know about. It's like, I learned yesterday that a man who makes arrows is called a fletcher.

"I'm full of irrelevant knowledge, but it might be useful doing a crossword one day."

However, she doesn't think of herself as a star, previously explaining: "Someone once said to me, 'I never thought I'd see a celebrity in Waitrose. And I thought, I'm not a celebrity! I'm a jobbing actor!"