(BANG) -Dame Judi Dench had to visit her dentist in full period costume after damaging her tooth during a shoot.

The Oscar-winning actress had been working on a Christmas special of BBC TV show 'Cranford' - which is based on three 19th Century novellas written by Elizabeth Gaskell - when she had a dental disaster and lost a crown.

Judi was in full 1840s dress - which she wears for her role as Matty Jenkins in the drama - when she was rushed to the practice in Ealing, west London.

She said: "There wasn't time for me to change. So I was in my wig and bonnet and all my clothes. I went into the waiting room and everyone kept looking.

"When I got in to see the dentist, he said, 'Are you busy working?' I was wearing a full wig with curls."

Although 74-year-old Judi is famous for her period roles on both the big and small screens, she insists she wouldn't have wanted to live in the 1800s because of "all that washing".

The actress - who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her turn as British monarch Queen Elizabeth I in 'Shakespeare in Love' - said: "Mind you, when I was little we didn't have a dishwasher, we didn't have a washing machine - we didn't have any of those things, so we had a bit of that at the end of the 1930s."

(C) BANG Media International