Judi Dench Gives Candid Update On Her Deteroriating Eyesight

The Oscar winner said she would "walk into something or fall over" if she attended an event alone now.
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Judi Dench pictured in February 2024
via Associated Press

Dame Judi Dench has said she’s no longer able to go out alone as the result of her deteroriating eyesight.

The Oscar-winning actor has spoken out several times in the past few years year about her issues with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which she was diagnosed with a decade ago, and causes gradual loss of sight.

During a new interview on the podcast Fearless With Trinny Woodall, the 90-year-old said that “somebody will always be with me” now when she goes attends events.

“I have to now because I can’t see and I will walk into something or fall over,” she explained.

In 2022, the Cats star told Louis Theroux that she’d massively cut back on work as the result of her eyesight.

“I don’t want to retire,” she insisted, but claimed she was “not doing much at the moment because I can’t see”.

Opening up to Graham Norton the following year, she said that reading scripts had “become impossible” for her.

“Because I have a photographic memory, I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” she claimed. 

“I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. Could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”

Following this, she told reporters at the Chelsea Flower Show that she had no work lined up because she “can’t see”Her agents had no comment at the time.

Dame Judi’s most recent on-screen acting credit was in the 2022 film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s Allelujah, in which she shared the screen with Jennifer Saunders, Derek Jacobi and Russell Tovey, as well as making a cameo as herself in the festive musical Spirited that same year.

Listen to Dame Judi Dench’s interview in full on Fearless With Trinny Woodall.