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Dame Judi Dench claims her eyesight is getting so bad she’s having trouble continuing to gamble.
Speaking on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, the 88-year-old actress said an age-related degenerative eye condition is affecting her ability to remember lines.
“It’s 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,” Dench said. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and memorize them. I could do the whole Twelfth Night now.”
Dench has suffered from macular degeneration for more than a decade.
“You find a way to just move on and get over the things that you find very difficult,” she said. “I had to find another way to learn lines and things, which is great friends of mine who recite them to me over and over again… I did The Winter’s Tale with Kenneth Branagh and played Paulina a few years ago, and after.” after walking at the Garrick for about three weeks he said to me – I have a long speech at the end – he said, ‘Judi, if you were going to give that speech about eight feet to your right, you would be saying it to me and not to the [proscenium].’ I rely on people to tell me!”
Despite the difficulties, Dench is still working and appears in the film Allelujah, based on a 2018 play by Alan Bennett set in a geriatric ward.