Judi Dench says she can no longer see on movie sets anymore
Veteran actor Dame Judi Dench has revealed that her eyesight has deteriorated to the point that she can no longer see on film sets. She continues to work in the face of the situation.
Speaking to The Mirror’s Notebook magazine, the 88-year-old actor revealed that “I can’t see on a film set any more” and “I can’t see to read”. However, Dench maintained that she’s continuing to attempt to work around the issue caused by her eyesight’s deterioration, “But you just deal with it”.
She explained: “It’s difficult if I have any length of a part. I haven’t yet found a way. Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”
Regarding her decision to keep working, she said: “I have an irrational fear of boredom. That’s why I now have this tattoo that says carpe diem. That’s what we should live by.”
Dench was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in 2012 and had to give up driving a few years back when her eyesight worsened. “It’s the most terrible shock to the system,” she expressed in the past. “Ghastly. It’s terrible to be so dependent on people.”
Elsewhere in the discussion with Notebook, Dench spoke about her partner, the conservationist David Mills who she met in 2010, nine years after her husband Michael Williams passed away in 2001 from lung cancer. “He used to cry when he laughed,” she said of Williams. “The more he laughed the more he cried. Oh God, he made me laugh.”
“I never expected, not for a minute, that there would be anybody else in my life after Michael died,” she continued of meeting David Mills, who she says she is “lucky” to have met.
“I’ve had many, many good friends, but it’s been very unexpected to have somebody new who is as caring as my partner, David,” she added. “Someone to be able to share things with… I feel very lucky indeed. And to laugh with somebody is terribly important! Laughing is the most important thing. We laugh about everything.”
