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Judi Dench reveals that her eyesight has worsened: “I can’t recognize anybody now”
Judi Dench has revealed the struggle she has with her eye condition which is getting worse over time. The 90-year-old actress had already shared in 2012 that she herself was facing macular degeneration, a disease that causes blurred or reduced central vision and is the most common cause of vision loss in people over 50, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Dench revealed the sad state of her vision in a new interview with ITV News, saying she “can’t recognize anybody now.”
“I can’t see anymore,” she admitted. “I can’t see the television. I can’t see to read.”
Next to Ian McKellen, her former Macbeth costar, 86, she told him that she could only see his “outline” and knew it was him just because “I know you so well in your Macbeth scarf.”
Judi Dench shares how her worsening vision has affected her independence
Ian McKellen was joking with Judi Dench during the ITV News interview, asking, “But do you approach absolute strangers and say, ‘Lovely to see you again?'” She answered laughingly, “Yes, sometimes.”
The Skyfall actress confided in January that she had to be accompanied if she wanted to go out alone, as her eyesight was getting worse. “There will always be someone with me,” she said on the Fearless podcast by Trinny Woodall. “I have to be now because I cannot see and I might walk into something or fall.”
“I am always feeling anxious before going to an event. I don’t know the reason for it… I am not good at being alone and I would not be even now. And thankfully, I do not have to now as I am merely pretending to have no vision,” she said with a chuckle.
Judi Dench reveals how losing her sight has negatively influenced her acting and memorizing lines
In the instance of her being interviewed in February 2023, Dench mentioned that her declining vision was making her acting very difficult, and she was even having trouble remembering her lines.
“It’s something that got to the point where it was unfeasible. And as I happen to have a photographic memory, I am now on a quest for a machine that will not just instruct me my lines but also indicate to me the location of the page,” she disclosed on The Graham Norton Show. “I found it very easy to memorize lines and recall them. I can actually perform the entire Twelfth Night at this moment.”
Judi Dench on using the help of friends to memorize scripts when her vision deteriorated
Judi Dench talked about how she changed her method of working when she lost the ability to read and explained the process of memorizing her lines during a chat in 2021, which was a benefit for the Vision Foundation, a charity for people who have lost their sight and is located in London. “Essentially, it is about finding a way of managing and overcoming the things that you struggle with greatly,” she told The Guardian. “I have had to find different ways of getting my lines which is basically my friends who are my great friends and thus absolutely willingly, they repeat my lines to me again, and again, and again. So the way I have to learn is through repetition, and I simply cannot be more hopeful that people will not be able to notice if the lines are terrible and they will think that everything is quite alright!”