Judi Dench Hints At Retirement Due To Worsening Vision

Dame Judi Dench says her vision has been getting in the way of her storied acting career.

During Britain’s Chelsea flower show over the weekend, the Academy Award winner was asked if she was working on any future roles, to which she replied, “No, no, I can’t even see!”

But the star, who’s been open about the eye disease she’s struggled with for years, isn’t retiring yet. She told reporters she’ll still be on the road promoting her book, “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent” and, later this summer, will be taking part in three public talks with former member of Parliament and British media personality Gyles Brandreth.

Dench has previously spoken about how her condition, age-related macular degeneration, has hampered her ability to take on new roles. Opening up to the Sunday Mirror last year, the English actor said she “can’t see on a film set any more” and “can’t see to read” but has learned to “just deal with it.”

“It’s difficult if I have any length of a part,” she went on. She said friends have helped her learn her lines, but hasn’t “yet found a way.”

In a 2022 interview with BBC journalist Louis Theroux, Dench lamented that she “doesn’t want to retire” but has been struggling with how to adapt.

She said she’d tried working with live line-readers: “I have a photographic memory, so a person saying to me, ‘This is your line’ — I can do that.”

“I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” the “Shakespeare in Love” star said on “The Graham Norton Show” last year. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of ‘Twelfth Night’ right now.”

Disabled actors often struggle to find work, but there are ways of making productions more accessible.

In lieu of using paper scripts and standard teleprompters, actors with sight conditions sometimes work with assistive technology such as portable magnifiers, braille notetakers, and refreshable braille displays to read scripts. They may also work with digital scripts, which can allow them to control the font size.