Dame Judi Dench has given an emotional and deeply personal update on her deteriorating eyesight, admitting she can no longer recognise the faces of her own friends.
The acting legend, now 90, was first diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration back in 2012. The condition, which causes permanent loss of central vision, has continued to progress to the point where Judi says she can no longer watch television, read, or make out people’s faces.
Speaking alongside her friend of 50 years, Sir Ian McKellen, during a promotional interview for a new Shakespeare teaching resource, Judi revealed why she has stepped back from on-camera work. She explained to ITV News: “No, because I can’t see anymore.” Ian gently teased her by saying “we can see you,” prompting Judi to smile: “Yes, and I can see your outline and I know you so well with your Macbeth scarf. But I can’t recognise anyone.”
She added that people often assume she has become aloof, joking: “People think ‘oh get her, she’s got very grand,’ but it’s because I can’t see. I can’t see the television, can’t see to read.”
Ian even asked whether she ever mistakes strangers for old friends. Judi laughed: “Yes, sometimes!”
This isn’t the first time Judi has spoken honestly about her changing abilities. At a Vision Foundation event in 2021, she admitted script reading has become nearly impossible. “You find a way of getting about and getting over the things you find very difficult,” she said, adding that she now learns lines by having friends repeat them “over and over and over again.”
She told Graham Norton that she misses relying on what used to be her 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. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”
In recent years, Judi has stepped away from major acting roles. Her last film appearance was in Allelujah (2022), and earlier this year she confirmed she has “no future projects in the pipeline.” While attending the Chelsea Flower Show, she bluntly told a reporter: “No, no, I can’t even see!”
Yet in the past, she remained determined to keep going, telling Louis Theroux: “I don’t want to retire. I’m not doing much at the moment because I can’t see. It’s bad. But if someone tells me my line, I can do that.”
Judi also shared a moving moment from dinner with her partner David Mills, revealing he had to cut up her food because she couldn’t see it on the plate: “He cut it up and handed something to me on a fork, and that’s the way I ate it.”
Despite her worsening condition, Judi has returned to screens this Christmas, appearing in a new ShelterBox campaign alongside Dame Imelda Staunton, supporting families who have lost their homes in disasters.
