Judi Dench has been battling macular degeneration for nearly a decade, but has shared the recent news that continuing to act has become “impossible” due to her vision loss.
“It became impossible, and because I have a photographic memory, I had to find a machine that would not only teach me my lines, but tell me where they would appear on the page,” Dench said on “The Graham Norton Show” (via People). “It used to be very easy for me to learn the lines and memorize them. I could do the whole ‘Twelfth Night’ now.
The Oscar winner previously said she was determined to “find another way to learn lines,” including having “my great friends repeat them over and over” to learn through voice repetition.
“I have to learn through repetition and I just hope people don’t notice too much if every line is completely hopeless!” Dench explained in 2021: “One thing it allows for is that you have to get really close to people before you recognize who they are. During the confinement, I made a film and spoke closely to the people wearing masks during the rehearsals, they had nothing to do with any of the scenes in which I was involved. Something great if you can do it, and that’s the bright side of it. to see this side of him.”
Dench added in 2022 that she would “find a way” to continue acting despite losing her sight.
“The only thing that slows me down is that I can’t read scripts,” Dench said. “The thing about the movie is that you don’t deserve it anymore. I have a lot of movies that I’ve never seen and I don’t want to because I’d just be irritated.”
Speaking about her career, the ‘Belfast’ star said: ‘You can do one thing that’s successful and the next thing you can do the tit. You can never take it for granted, and the right thing to do is not to.”
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