Dame Judi Dench, who turned 90 last month, has revealed to Vanity Fair that her eyesight is now so bad that she can no longer go out in public on her own.
As published in the magazine, Dench’s age-related macular degeneration is now so bad that somebody will “always be with me.”
“I have to now, because I can’t see and I’ll walk into something or fall over.”
The magazine said that Dench first revealed in 2012 that she had AMD, telling Reuters in a statement at the time: “I do not wish for this to be overblown. This condition is something that thousands and thousands of people all over the world are having to contend with. It’s something that I have learnt to cope with and adapt to – and it will not lead to blindness.”
Speaking about her condition now, Dench told the magazine that she has “no eyesight” and requires a companion. She’s always been “nervous before going to something,” the legendary actor added.
“I’m not good at that at all. Not at all. Nor would I be now. And fortunately I don’t have to be now.”
More than a decade after her initial diagnosis, Dench said that due to her worsening vision, it had “become impossible” to remember lines. “You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she said on an episode of The Graham Norton Show in February 2023. “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 recalled one instance where, while starring in a West End production of The Winter’s Tale, her co-star Kenneth Branagh told her, “Judi, if you were to say that speech about eight feet to your right, you’d be saying it to me and not to the [proscenium].” Added Dench, “I rely on people to tell me!”
But the actor, whose last credited onscreen film work is in the 2022 Apple TV+ holiday comedy Spirited with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, has not publicly disclosed plans to retire.
Vanity Fair said that In July 2023, Dench told The Daily Mirror’s Notebook magazine that while it feels “ghastly” to be “so dependent on people” to learn lines, she wants to work “as much as I can.”
Dench said then that she has an “irrational fear of boredom,” and even got a tattoo that says “carpe diem” on her wrist at age 81: “That’s what we should live by.”
More reading
New biomarkers identify glaucoma patients at risk of vision loss
COVID-19 virus shown to breach retinal barrier and damage the eye
Visual test could predict dementia onset a decade before diagnosis
