Key Takeaways
- Judi Dench’s health challenges include Macular Degeneration, impacting her vision.
- She expressed difficulties in recognizing people and reading during interviews.
- Dench hinted at retirement due to her vision issues affecting her acting.
- Her recent projects include a cameo in Spirited and a voice role in The Forgeries of Jealousy.
Aging gracefully is a luxury afforded to few. As we age, our bodies follow suit, breaking down in unanticipated ways, leaving us with questions about unsolvable problems, ailments, and mysteries. This reality isn’t the case for everyone, but the majority of us will come up against some significant health challenges before it’s our time to shuffle off this mortal coil. Take Academy and Tony Award winner Judi Dench, for example, who recently detailed her struggle with an eye condition that’s causing her to lose her sight.
What did Judi Dench say about her failing eyesight?
“No, you don’t [see me on camera], because I can’t see anymore,” Dench told an ITV News reporter during a recent interview while visiting with her Macbeth co-star Ian McKellen. When McKellen joked that he could see her just fine, Dench replied, “Yes, and I can see your outline and I know you so well, in your Macbeth scarf. But I can’t recognize anybody now.”
“I can’t see the television, I can’t see to read,” Dench continued.
Judi Dench, who famously starred in Notes on a Scandal, Shakespeare in Love, and as M in Daniel Craig’s James Bond films, hinted at retirement last year, saying, “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.”
What’s next for Judi Dench?
Dench, whose eye condition is known as Macular Degeneration, has slowed her on-screen appearances in recent years. After starring in Kenneth Branagh’s period drama Belfast (2021) and as Mary in the Richard Eyre-directed drama Allelujah (2022), Dench popped in for a cameo as herself in director Sean Anders’ Spirited, a holiday comedy starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer. Since then, Dench has mainly kept to herself, with a voice role in the short film The Forgeries of Jealousy as her only upcoming credit.
What is your favorite Judi Dench role? Will her photographic memory keep her in the acting game, or is she in the midst of a slow but steady retirement? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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