Judi Dench says she can’t read scripts anymore due to vision loss: “It has become impossible”
Judi Dench has revealed that she struggles to read scripts due her worsening eye condition.
The Oscar-winning actress was diagnosed with advanced macular degeneration in 2012 and has been dealing with the loss of her vision.
While appearing on The Graham Norton Show, Dench admitted that she has found it harder and harder to read scripts and learn her lines.
“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,” she said.
“I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them,” she continued. “I could do the whole of ‘Twelfth Night’ right now.”
In 2021 interview with The Guardian, Dench revealed that she asks her friends to help her with lines by reading them out loud to her.
“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she 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!”
AMD is common condition that affects the middle part of a person’s vision. It usually affects people in their 50s and 60s, but does not cause total blindness.
Last year, Dench recalled how she once shouted “wanker” at a complete stranger after mistaking them for her friend Alistair McGowan.
“I was driving along and saw who I thought was Alistair McGowan and I shouted ‘wanker’… and it was a total stranger,” she told The Independent, blaming her worsening vision for the mistake.
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Chris Edwards
NME
