Dame Judi Dench has delivered a heartbreaking update on her worsening eyesight.
The Oscar winner, 91, is living with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), an incurable eye condition she was diagnosed with more than a decade ago.
The condition affects vision and has made it increasingly difficult for her to recognize faces or read scripts.
Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Dench gave a stark account of how the condition has affected her career.
“I can’t be on stage. I can’t do a play any more. I can’t do a film any more. I can’t read any more,” she said.
Dench, who was diagnosed in 2012, also described the awkward situations her sight loss can cause, explaining that she sometimes approaches the wrong person and nearly hugs them before realizing her mistake.
Asked about getting older, she replied: “There’s nothing to say for it at all. [I] don’t think about it too much.”
The celebrated actress has enjoyed a career spanning more than seven decades, establishing herself as one of Britain’s most respected performers across theater, television and film.
She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1999 for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, despite appearing on screen for only a few minutes.
Dench also became internationally recognized for playing M, the head of MI6 in the James Bond franchise. She made her debut as the character in GoldenEye in 1995, becoming the first woman to take on the role, and appeared in eight 007 movies up until Spectre in 2015.
However, her deteriorating eyesight has increasingly affected her ability to work.
Earlier this year, she told The Graham Norton Show that worsening eyesight has made memorizing scripts and learning her lines difficult.
“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,” she said.
“I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them,” she added. “I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”
In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Dench explained that she relies on friends to read her scripts aloud so she can learn her lines.
“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she said. “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.
“So I have to learn through repetition, and I just hope that people won’t notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!”
Still, Dench remains determined to carry on working.
She spoke to the BBC ahead of the release of her memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, co-written with theater director Brendan O’Hea.
Dench has also stressed how vital audio has become in keeping her connected to the world, explaining: “The radio has always been important to me.”
