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Dame Judi Dench has revealed that her name was chosen for her by a medium in the 1930s.

The actress, who portrays Noël Coward's iconic medium Madame Arcati in a new movie version of Blithe Spirit, said she was given the name after her father had an encounter with a clairvoyant.

“A very strange thing happened at the time that I was born. My father was a doctor, my mother was from Dublin, and they lived in York," she told The Observer. "There was a famous medium. My father met her a day after I was born. She said to him, ‘I’m very pleased to hear about Judith.’ My parents had no idea what I would be called and so I was called Judith which – fortunately – now I’m never called."

Dench went on to say that she remains openminded about the existence of an afterlife. "There was great belief in the 1930s in mediums. They toured and people went to the shows," she added. "I think it’s difficult for us to say that there is nothing. There is a huge world that we don’t know about. I implicitly believe that, because all sorts of things have happened to me."

Dench follows in the footsteps of Dame Angela Lansbury, Dame Margaret Rutherford, Jennifer Saunders, and Alison Steadman, who have all played the eccentric medium Madame Arcati on stage and screen in the past. The new Blithe Spirit movie co-starring Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher, and Leslie Mann will be released in the U.K. on January 15 and in the U.S. at a later date to be confirmed.

Are you looking forward to seeing Dame Judi Dench as Madame Arcati?