Dame Judi Dench says she can no longer act on stage or screen or read, more than a decade after being diagnosed with the eye condition that has gradually taken her sight.
"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," Dench, 91, told Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. She was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration in 2012, a condition that has made it increasingly difficult even to recognise faces; she described sometimes approaching the wrong person in public and "giving them an almost hug" before realising her mistake.
A seven-decade career
Dench has spent more than 70 years on stage, television and film, winning an Academy Award for best supporting actress as Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's Shakespeare in Love and becoming internationally known for playing M, James Bond's boss, starting with 1995's GoldenEye — the first woman to hold the role. Asked for her views on who should play Bond next, she offered none.
Despite her condition, Dench continues to make public appearances, crediting radio with keeping her connected to performance: "The radio has always been important to me," she said. During the interview she recalled meeting the actor Sidney Poitier backstage in New York decades ago — "it was thrilling," she said — and spoke of her enduring love of Shakespeare, tracing it to childhood memories of watching her brother perform in Macbeth. "He walked on and he said 'What bloody man is that?' I thought, 'oh my God, this is for me.'"
Her sight loss has increasingly affected her work in recent years, with Dench previously describing difficulty seeing on film sets and learning scripts. Even so, she remains characteristically unsentimental about ageing. Asked what there was to say for it, she replied: "There's nothing to say for it at all. Don't think about it too much." More information on living with macular degeneration is available from the Royal National Institute of Blind People.