VENICE, Italy (AP) — Acting royalty Judi Dench says she owes her film career to Queen Victoria.

Dench had one of her first big movie roles as the long-reigning British monarch in 1997 drama "Mrs. Brown," which was made for television but then released theatrically.

Twenty years on, she plays the queen later in her life in "Victoria & Abdul," which is premiering Sunday at the Venice Film Festival.

The Stephen Frears-directed film charts the relationship between the monarch and an Indian man, Abdul Karim, who became first her servant and then her teacher.

Dench told reporters "I had no film career really to speak of" before she played the queen the first time.

She said revisiting the role and working Frears — who directed her in "Philomena"— was "an irresistible proposition."