Actress Judi Dench revealed on July 30 that her eyesight has seriously deteriorated. Age-related macular degeneration, which the 88-year-old Briton has suffered from for more than a decade, has worsened. “I can’t see on movie sets anymore, and I can’t read (scripts) anymore… But I deal with it,” she told the Sunday Mirror. “It’s difficult if I have a very long role. I haven’t found a solution yet, but I have a lot of friends who teach me the scripts. However, I have a photographic memory. I need to find a machine that teaches me my lines and also tells me where they appear on the page,” she told People. The Oscar winner of Shakespeare in Love has always been very honest about the effects of her illness on her professional life. Judi Dench added to the Sunday Mirror that she now had to memorize the entire lines orally before going to the film sets. “You find a way to move on and get through the tough stuff. I had to find another way to learn lines and things. So I have to learn by repetition, and I just hope the audience doesn’t notice,” she said.
For the moment, the actress has no intention of letting her state of health take over her career. The actress also refuses to retire and intends to work “as much as possible”, because she has an “irrational fear of boredom”. Despite illness, Judi Dench recently starred in the film Belfast, released in France in March 2022 and for which she was nominated for an Oscar in the “best secondary actress” category. The public can also find her in Allelujah (2022), a film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play by Richard Eyre.
Considered one of Britain’s greatest post-war theater comedians, Judi Dench won eight Olivier Awards and a Tony Award in 1999 for her role in the play Amy’s Views. The Briton is also one of cinema’s greatest icons and has performed cult roles, including that of M in all eight James Bond films.
