- Dame Judi Dench suffers from age-related macular degeneration.
- She said on "The Graham Norton Show" that her vision loss has made it "impossible" to read scripts.
Oscar-winner Dame Judi Dench is opening up about her battle with vision loss.
The 88-year-old actress revealed on Friday's episode of "The Graham Norton Show" that her vision has gotten so bad she can't read scripts to learn her lines anymore.
"It has become impossible, and because I have a 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," Dench said, according to People. "I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of 'Twelfth Night' right now."
In 2021, while speaking at an online event for the London sight loss charity Vision Foundation, Dench said that due to age-related macular degeneration, she needed the assistance of friends to help her memorize scripts."You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult," Dench said at the time. "I've had to find another way of learning lines and things, which is having great friends of mine repeat them to me over and over and over again. So I have to learn through repetition, and I just hope that people won't notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!"
Dench received her eighth Oscar nomination for her performance in Kenneth Branagh's 2021 film "Belfast" (she won an Oscar in 1999 for "Shakespeare in Love").
Most recently, Dench had a cameo in the Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds Christmas musical comedy "Spirited."