‘The snake fell out of my wig’: why Judi Dench lost her voice when playing Cleopatra

The actor recalls a terrifying moment when playing the doomed Egyptian queen during a 1987 production of the Shakespeare classic

Wriggly creatures have always scared Judi Dench. I'm a person who is frightened of a worm because one jumped inside my sandal when I was a little girl, and we couldn't get it out," she said.

So after being cast in the 1987 National Theatre production of Antony and Cleopatra, Dench was terrified when director Peter Hall said there would be live snakes on stage.