‘I can’t do a film anymore’: Acting legend Judi Dench’s sad health update

For seven decades, Judi Dench has made a living from words. Shakespeare on stage. Orders delivered as M. Now, she says she can no longer read them.

The 91-year-old actor has revealed that her worsening eyesight has left her unable to perform in films or plays, more than a decade after she publicly disclosed she had macular degeneration.

“I can't be on stage, I can't do a play anymore, I can't do a film anymore. I can't read anymore,” she told the BBC on Thursday, 22 October, according to ABC News’ Good Morning America.

‘I can’t see your face at all’

During the interview, Dench explained that she could not see the interviewer's face, who was sitting just feet away.

Asked how she was finding life with her deteriorating sight, she replied: “I have to put up [with it].”

Recognising people has become difficult. Dench described approaching people she thought she knew, greeting them and offering a hug before discovering her mistake.

She first publicly discussed losing her sight in 2012. Now, the condition affects both her ability to work and the everyday encounters that once required little thought.

From Shakespeare to the secret service

Dench’s career has moved between Shakespeare’s leading women and one of cinema’s most formidable bosses.

She has played Juliet, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra on stage, and M in eight James Bond films. Over seven decades in theatre, film and television, she has earned an Oscar, a Tony and seven Olivier awards.

In a BBC interview, she discussed her enduring love of Shakespeare’s sonnets and the nerves that came with performing, describing fear as a source of energy for her work.

A voice audiences still recognise

Her recent credits include The Magic Faraway Tree, released earlier this year and starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy.

Dench supplied the voice of a technologically advanced refrigerator that spies on its users. It gave audiences another chance to hear her, even as the sight loss she has lived with for years places greater limits on her work.