Judi Dench is opening up about her harrowing eye condition.
The English actress, who is about to turn 91 on December 9, is detailing life with advanced macular degeneration
Dench appeared on ITV on Nov. 25, alongside longtime friend Ian McKellen and said she “can’t see anymore.”
The “GoldenEye” actress, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2012, confessed that she can’t read or watch television.
“You don’t [see me on camera anymore] because I can’t see,” explained Dench. “I’ve got, you know, that thing.”
McKellen, 86, who starred opposite the Hollywood vet in 1979’s “Macbeth,” teased that people could still see her.
“Yes, and I can see your outline and I know you so well,” Dench responded. “But I can’t recognize anybody anymore.”
McKellen asked the actress if she ever approaches “total strangers and say, ‘Lovely to see you again,’” which got a laugh out of Dench.
She cheekily replied: “Sometimes!”
In January, Dench got candid on the difficult eye condition, explaining she can’t go out alone anymore.
“Somebody will always be with me. I have to now because I can’t see and I will walk into something or fall over,” she shared while on British entrepreneur Trinny Woodall’s “Fearless” podcast at the time.
Dench admitted that she’s “always nervous before going to something.”
“I’m not good at being on my own at all, nor would I be now. And fortunately, I don’t have to now because I pretend to have no eyesight,” she added with a laugh.
AMD is a common condition and stands as the leading cause of permanent and rapid loss of vision in older adults, per the National Institutes of Health.
Dench has previously touched on how the eye condition has affected her 60-year acting career.
When asked at an event in May 2024 if she had any upcoming projects in the works, Dench responded, “No, no. I can’t even see.”
In 2023, Dench revealed while on “The Graham Norton Show” that she was finding it harder and harder to read scripts and learn her lines.
The Oscar winner added: “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.”
In 2021, Dench told Vision Foundation that she asks her friends to help her with lines by reading them aloud.
“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” the actress explained 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 last starred in the 2022 British drama “Allelujah” and made a cameo in Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell’s Christmas comedy “Spirited” that same year.
On her IMDb page, Dench is listed as the voice of Titania in the upcoming short “Forgeries of Jealousy.”
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