Judi Dench Opens up About Vision Loss: ‘I Can’t See on a Film Set Anymore’

Judi Dench says she “can’t see on film sets anymore” due to vision loss caused by macular degeneration. The beloved Oscar-winning actor, 88, was diagnosed with the age-related eye disease in 2012 and has been vocal about her struggles to adjust to the symptoms of the condition.

Age-related macular degeneration blurs your central vision after age causes damage to the macula, part of the retina. Dench has previously spoken about relying on the help of friends to read scripts. Now, Dench has provided an update on the progression of her vision loss in a new interview with the Sunday Mirror.

“I can’t see on a film set anymore, and I can’t see to read,” she said. “So I can’t see much. But you know you just deal with it. Get on.” The Pride & Prejudice star has no intentions to retire from acting anytime soon, but she admits that “it’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part. I haven’t yet found a way. Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”

Dench had to stop driving a few years ago when her blurry vision began to worsen. Her acting career, however, is still active. “I have an irrational fear of boredom,” she told the outlet. “That’s why I now have this tattoo that says carpe diem. That’s what we should live by.”

Related

Jonathan Pryce Defends 'The Crown' After Judi Dench Slams Netflix Series

The James Bond star now memorizes lines with the help of her friends. In a 2022 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, she said reading scripts on her own has “become impossible,” which means her “photographic memory” is all but useless to her in that regard. Prior to her vision loss, memorizing lines was a breeze. “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 on Graham Norton. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”

Speaking with London eyesight charity Vision Foundation in 2021, Dench explained how friends help her work through these new struggles when taking on a new acting job. “You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she explained. “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!”

While help from friends is great, Dench previously told Sunday Mirror that such vision loss is “the most terrible shock to the system.” “Ghastly,” she said. “It’s terrible to be so dependent on people.”

Dench earned an Oscar nomination for her work in Kenneth Branagh‘s Oscar-winning film Belfast in 2021. Her most recent film, Allelujah, came out in 2022 and she made a cameo appearance in Apple TV+‘s Spirited.