Judi Dench, at 80, still looks ahead, like her character in Marigold Hotel films

Judi Dench takes an awkward pause. Her interviewer's name is familiar, even if the actor he shares it with has never played one of Dench's versions of James Bond.

"Well, I don't know whether to have a nice little chat … or give you an assignment … Double O Seven." The Oscar-winning queen of the British stage and screen cackles, and she does not laugh alone. The actress laughs easily and often - at her luck, her career, at the fact that she never chooses a film role solely based "on the exotic location" the story is set in. "You know, like Michael Caine."

Dench is back on screen with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, happy for the reunion that comes with this sequel to the surprise hit of 2011-12. (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel had its premiere at the 2011 Sorrento Incontro Internazionale del Cinema, and went on commercial release in 2012.) It's not like she met her fellow cast members on the Indian sets of a comedy about British old-age pensioners moving into a "home" in a land where old age is revered and pension stretches a lot further than in Britain. These players have trod the boards together for decades.

"I was at The National [Theatre of Great Britain] with Bill Nighy, and I was with Ronnie Pickup in Amy's View [also at the National Theatre], Celia [Imrie] and I did [TV show] Cranford, Penelope [Wilton] and I have worked together. And Mags and I have worked together since, oh, 1958."

She calls Maggie Smith "Mags". That must be one of those one-dame-to-another privileges.