Screen legend Dame Judi Dench is now almost completely blind.
The 91-year-old Notes on a Scandal star couldn’t even recognize her old friend Sir Ian McKellen, her costar in a 1979 production of Macbeth, when the two did a recent joint interview on ITV News.
“No, you don’t [see me on camera], because I can’t see anymore,” she told the reporter.
ITV News
When McKellen, 86, quipped they could still see her, the veteran star responded, “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,” she added.
The X-Men star then jokingly asked Dench if she ever goes up to “total strangers [to] say, ‘Lovely to see you again’ ”?
“Sometimes,” chuckled Dench, who played spymaster M in eight James Bond films.
In 2012, she was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration, which affects the retina and causes a loss of central vision, so objects that are straight ahead appear blurry or distorted.
Apple TV+
The Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe award winner hasn’t appeared in a movie since a cameo in the 2022 Christmas musical comedy Spirited, costarring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, though she also appeared in a holiday ad that ran in the U.K.
REX USA
Over the past couple of years, she’s been hinting at retiring, explaining according to Deadline, “It’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part. I haven’t yet found a way [to read].”
“Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”
However, she’s still toiling in theater, in a new capacity — she and McKellen are working on a program to revitalize the Shakespeare curriculum in English schools, including using performances of his plays to teach students about the Bard.
This story Dame Judi Dench Reveals She ‘Can’t See Anymore’ Amid Battle With Age-Related Macular Degeneration first appeared on Globe. Add Globe as a Preferred Source by clicking here.