Judi Dench Doesn’t Mind Using Her Poor Eyesight as an Excuse to Ditch Events
· Rolling StoneDame Judi Dench opened up about the difficulties her deteriorating eyesight has caused — as well as a few cheeky positives — during a recent interview on the Fearless podcast.
The 90-year-old actress has been battling advanced macular degeneration (AMD), a condition that does not cause blindness, though it does make facial recognition and reading especially difficult. On Fearless, Dench said that in any event she goes to these days, “Somebody will always be with me,” adding with a laugh: “I have to now because I can’t see and will walk into something or fall over.”
Long before she required a companion, though, Dench quipped that she was never good at going to events or parties by herself. “Not at all, nor would I be now,” she said. “But fortunately, I don’t have to now because I can pretend I have no eyesight!”
In a 2023 interview on The Graham Norton Show, Dench spoke about how AMD has curtailed her acting career, saying the condition had made it “impossible” to learn her lines from a script. Noting that she had a “photographic memory,” the storied actress said, “I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page. I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”
Dench’s last two feature film appearances came in 2022 when she made a short cameo in the Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds Christmas comedy Spirited and took on a larger part in Richard Eyre’s Allelujah. Over the past couple of years, she’s made a handful of live appearances — including a Christmas show in London where she honored the late Maggie Smith — and popped up on several TV specials and documentaries.