Judi Dench: "Due to an eye disease I can no longer act or read"

Judi Dench can no longer act or read due to age-related macular degeneration, which she was diagnosed with in 2012. The 91-year-old Oscar-winning British actress told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "I can't be on stage. I can't do a theater show anymore. I can't do a film anymore. I can't read anymore," she said. The disease makes it difficult for her to even recognize faces: sometimes, she explained, she approaches the wrong people "and almost gives them a hug" before realizing the mistake. She was clear about aging: "There's really nothing good about it. I don't think about it too much."

seventy year career

The interview came ahead of the release of the memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, written by Dench with theater director Brendan O'Hea. In over seventy years of career in theatre, film and television, Dench won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1999 for her role as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. In 1995, with GoldenEye, she was the first woman to play M, James Bond's boss within Her Majesty's Secret Service, as well as having been awarded the title of dame in the past. In June she became the first actress to have a theater in London's West End named after her, the Shaftesbury Theatre, which from next year will be called the Judi Dench Theatre.