Dame Judi Dench Reveals She ‘Can’t See Anymore’ Amid Battle With Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Screen legend Dame Judi Dench is now almost completely blind.

The 91-year-old Notes on a Scandal star couldn’t even recognize her old friend Sir Ian McKellen, her costar in a 1979 production of Macbeth, when the two did a recent joint interview on ITV News.

“No, you don’t [see me on camera], because I can’t see anymore,” she told the reporter.

When McKellen, 86, quipped they could still see her, the veteran star responded, “Yes, and I can see your outline and I know you so well, in your Macbeth scarf. But I can’t recognize anybody now.

“I can’t see the television, I can’t see to read,” she added.

The X-Men star then jokingly asked Dench if she ever goes up to “total strangers [to] say, ‘Lovely to see you again’ ”?

“Sometimes,” chuckled Dench, who played spymaster M in eight James Bond films.

In 2012, she was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration, which affects the retina and causes a loss of central vision, so objects that are straight ahead appear blurry or distorted.

The Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe award winner hasn’t appeared in a movie since a cameo in the 2022 Christmas musical comedy Spirited, costarring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, though she also appeared in a holiday ad that ran in the U.K.

Over the past couple of years, she’s been hinting at retiring, explaining according to Deadline, “It’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part. I haven’t yet found a way [to read].”

“Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”

However, she’s still toiling in theater, in a new capacity — she and McKellen are working on a program to revitalize the Shakespeare curriculum in English schools, including using performances of his plays to teach students about the Bard.