The actor’s forthcoming memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? says the makers had honourable intentions but the elements ‘didn’t coalesce’

Dame Judi Dench has long made her feelings clear about Cats, the doomed 2019 adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. In an interview the year after release, she said she had so far declined to watch the movie – in which she played wise moggy Old Deuteronomy – and described the orange fur coat she had to wear as looking like “five foxes fucking on my back”.

In her forthcoming memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? Dench reflects further on her involvement in the movie, which was universally panned and whose director, Tom Hooper, has not made a film since.