Veteran actress and nonagenarian Judi Dench recently shared that her vision loss now prevents her from going out alone.
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The 90-year-old recently joined Trinny Woodall’s Fearless podcast, where she briefly opened up about her eye condition. The Skyfall star admitted that her poor eyesight meant never leaving her home alone.
“Somebody will always be with me,” a candid Dench admitted on the show. “I have to now because I can’t see, and I will walk into something or fall over.”Â
“I’m always nervous before going to something. I have no idea why… I’m not good at being on my own at all, nor would I be now. And fortunately, I don’t have to now because I pretend to have no eyesight,” she added, chuckling.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology explains that macular degeneration, a form of age-related vision loss, occurs due to issues with the retina. For Dench, this condition affects her ability to see objects directly in front of her clearly, though her peripheral vision remains unaffected.
Judi Dench Says Her Strong Memory Compensates For Her Eyesight Issues
Diagnosed in 2012, Dench says her strong memory aids in continuing to work despite the challenges of her deteriorating eyesight.
“[We] need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” she admitted on The Graham Norton Show in 2023, per People. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”
During a 2021 interview with the Vision Foundation, Judi Dench shared that she relies on friends to read her lines aloud, helping her navigate the challenges of sight loss.
“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” Dench explained then. “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!”
Judi Dench’s career has eased its pace in recent years. In 2022, she took on a leading role in the British drama Allelujah and made a brief but memorable appearance in the Christmas comedy Spirited, alongside Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell. Her performance in the 2021 film Belfast earned her an Academy Award nomination.