Dame Judi Dench, who, at 88, is one of the most acclaimed British thespians of her generation, has been suffering from a degenerative eye condition that has made it nearly impossible for her to perform her craft. The Academy Award-winning actress revealed as much to the Daily Mirror, saying in a new interview that she is no longer able to see on a movie set or read scripts.
“I can’t see on a film set anymore,” Dench said. “And I can’t see to read. So I can’t see much. But you know, you just deal with it. Get on. It’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part. I haven’t yet found a way. Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”
Despite these impediments, Dench told the Daily Mirror that she wants to work “as much as [she] can” and isn’t planning to retire anytime soon.
ADVERTISEMENT
Her condition, Dench told Louis Theroux in 2022, was “bad. Bad enough. Bad enough in that you’re quite fuzzy. You’re just a tad fuzzy.”
Being unable to see on set is a startling new development, but back in February, Dench also spoke about her struggles with reading scripts on The Graham Norton Show.
“It has become impossible, and because I have a photographic memory, I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines, but also tells me where they appear on the page,” Dench said at the time. “You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult... I’ve had to find another way of learning lines and things, which is having great friends of mine repeat them to me over and over and over again.”
Dench first announced that she had been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) back in 2012. According to SightMatters, in 2015, Dench was still able to read scripts in 22-point font. But her eyesight has gradually worsened over the years; she told Radio Times in 2021, “I can’t read the paper now, I can’t do the crossword, I can’t read a book.”
Dench also had to give up driving in 2017 due to her condition, she revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. “A couple of years ago I stopped driving,” she said, adding that the loss of her ability to do so was “traumatic” and “appalling...but I just know I’ll kill somebody if I get behind the wheel of a car now.”
