Judi Dench Says Acting ‘Has Become Impossible’ Amid Eyesight Loss: ‘I Need to Find a Machine That Teaches Me My Lines’

Judi Dench has been quite open with fans over the last several years about her degenerative eye condition, which has made it increasingly difficult for the 88-year-old Oscar winner to learn her lines. In a new interview on “The Graham Norton Show” (via People magazine), Dench said it’s now become “impossible” to learn lines because of her eyesight loss. The actor has long prided herself on having a photographic memory when it comes to scripts, but she can no longer rely on it.

“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,” Dench said. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of ‘Twelfth Night’ right now.”

During a 2021 conversation with the Vision Foundation, a London sight loss charity, Dench revealed that she asks her close friends to help her memorize new scripts by reading them aloud to her as the repetition of the dialogue helps her.

“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” Dench 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!”

Dench remained in good spirits, even sharing how her eye sight loss has contributed to humorous moments on film sets. She said, “I was doing the ‘Winter’s Tale’ with Kenneth Branagh a couple of years ago, playing Paulina, and after we had been running for three weeks or so at the Garrick he said to me — I have a long speech at the end — he said: ‘Judi, if you were to say that speech about eight feet to your right, you’d be saying it to me and not to the pros.’ I rely on people to tell me!”

Dench picked up an Oscar nomination in 2022 for her supporting performance in Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast.” She recently had a cameo in Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds’ Christmas musical comedy “Spirited” and starred in Richard Eyre’s 2022 drama “Allelujah,” based on Alan Bennett’s play of the same name.

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