Revered actor Judi Dench has spoken openly about her health, describing her worsening eyesight and memory worries, but says she is still able to remember the works of Shakespeare she’s been performing for most of her life.
“But I can’t remember what I’m doing tomorrow, I swear to you,” Dench said, speaking to Radio Times about her life at the age of 91 years old.
The British actor, who has played countless iconic roles from Queen Victoria to James Bond’s boss ‘M’, also addressed the toll that her age-related macular degeneration has had on her life and acting career. The degenerative condition, which Dench has had since 2012, affects the central part of the eye (the retina), and Dench said that even up close, faces are “in a fog”.
“It’s a crusher,” she said about the disease, noting that she suffers from both eyes being “wet” (the condition’s phase of most rapid vision loss) and it’s affected her ability to drive, as well as do activities she loves like reading, embroidering and watching television.
“I miss seeing Clive Myrie doing Mastermind, but I can hear the questions,” she said about not being able to see the television. “That’s what it is now.”
However, she can still recite long Shakespearean monologues and continues to learn lines for scripts with the help of her assistants.
Back in 2023, she had told The Independent that her macular degeneration had forced her into a de facto retirement from acting because she couldn’t see the film set anymore, but that “you just deal with it”.
Dench’s most recent screen role was a small part in the Christmas movie Spirited in 2022. Earlier that year, she also received her eighth Oscar nomination for her work on Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast.
Branagh will be interviewing Dench on another programme set to broadcast over Christmas.
With a career spanning six decades, Dench started theatre with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1957, before earning recognition in Shakespearean roles like Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. Her work on stage and screen has seen her garner various accolades, including a Tony Award, two Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA, which is the highest honour in British cinema.
Having played nearly every key female part in Shakespeare’s body of works, Dench is also set to star in a new documentary about her personal Shakespearean lineage.
“It has been such an adventure to explore the possibility that an ancestor of mine might just have got within touching distance of my hero William Shakespeare,” Dench told Channel 4 about the documentary.
“All the years I’ve spent playing Shakespeare and feeling a genuine, genuine passion for him and his work, to be on a journey where you might be stepping closer to him, it’s beyond my wildest dreams.”