Renowned journalist and documentarian Louis Theroux seemingly put his foot in it during an interview with screen legend Judi Dench when a cheeky question about her age arose.

Dench welcomed Theroux into her home for a touching interview where they discussed everything from Dench’s life in detail to life outside of her acting career.

However, Theroux landed himself in a spot of bother when he asked an innocent question about Dench’s pets.

“I’ve had a lot of pets, we had 17 cats during the war,” Dench explained

“Which war?” Theroux asked.

“Well the Second World War,” Dench quickly snapped back before humorously declaring “Louis, out”.

“I didn’t mean the First World War, I didn’t mean it like that I was just confused,” Louis scrambled.

“Bloody…am I the only person who heard that?” Dench then asked the film crew.

“I thought you might mean the Vietnam War,” Theroux claimed.

Following her light-hearted outburst Dench reply: “Oh, no – the Second World War.”

“Did I recover?” Louis asked with a chuckle.

The pair then enjoyed a laugh together following the awkward exchange.

The interview took a more serious turn when Theroux brought up Dench’s late husband, Michael Williams who died of lung cancer in 2001.

Theroux began by asking: “Are you okay talking about how it came to an end and how he came to die?”

After trying to explain, Dench struggled to hold back the tears as her vulnerable side came through.

“I’m not good at it actually,” she said holding onto a tissue, trying to avoid being overcome with emotion.

“Yes, he died in 2001 of lung cancer. Smoking you see, all that smoking when we were young.

“I was in New York and they said he was not well so my agent flew out and we came back on a Concord the next day and it aborted take off.

“We got off and got back on the next day and thought it would be all right and we got on another plane and the same thing happened.

“So it took us a long time to get back, but we did get back and we were all in the house together and that was very good indeed.”