Judi Dench makes heartbreaking health admission as she reveals she can’t go out alone anymore
Ben Thompson
Featured Image Credit: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for BFI
Dame Judi Dench has revealed how her eyesight deteriorating means she needs someone to 'always be with her' when leaving her house.
In 2021, the star revealed she had been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which, according to the NHS, affects a person's vision in the middle and can make everyday things, like reading or driving, incredibly difficult.
The health condition also largely affects people in their 50s and 60s, and it doesn't cause total blindness.
Dench appeared on Trinny Woodall’s Fearless podcast, where she spoke about how it was affecting her.
Advert
Dench said (via The Guardian): "Somebody will always be with me. I have to now because I can’t see and I will walk into something or fall over."
The Philomena actor said she's 'always nervous before going to something', adding: "I have no idea why. I’m not good at that at all. Not at all. Nor would I be now. And fortunately, I don’t have to be now because I pretend to have no eyesight."
In 2023, Dench first opened up about her faltering eyesight back in 2023, when she insisted she wanted to work as much as she could.
Speaking to The Mirror’s Notebook magazine, she said: "I mean, I can’t see on a film set anymore. And I can’t see to read. So I can’t see much. But, you know, you just deal with it. Get on."
Whilst appearing on The Graham Norton Show in 2023, Dench further expanded on how the condition affected her working life.
She admitted: "It has become impossible [to read scripts] and 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.
"I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now."
Dench has been a fixture on stage, television and film for well over sixty years.
She first got her start in the 1950s when she debuted in a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet at London’s Old Vic theatre.
Since then, she’s become a household name with films such as Shakespeare In Love, for which she won an Oscar.
Other notable films include Murder On The Orient Express, Victoria & Abdul, Pride & Prejudice, and Belfast.
Modern audiences are probably most familiar with her work as M in the James Bond series, which she featured in from 1995’s GoldenEye to 2012’s Skyfall.
Despite her output slowly in recent years, she has continued to make public appearances and was a speaker at Cheltenham Literary Festival in October last year to discuss her 2023 book, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent.