Dame Judi Dench is going blind – but that's not stopping her: "I'm still here, darling"
From her darkening world and the loss of her dearest friend to her fierce refusal to bow out of acting, Britain's most beloved actress is rewriting the rules of what it means to age in an industry obsessed with perfection.


The legendary actress, now 90, can barely see the people sitting across from her. But she's still memorizing scripts and stealing scenes.
"Sometimes I walk into a room and announce myself like a ship's fog horn," Dench revealed on Trinny Woodall's "Fearless" podcast, letting out her signature throaty laugh. "It's either that or bump into everyone."
The Oscar winner has been battling age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that's steadily stealing her vision. She can no longer read scripts or travel solo to film sets. But anyone thinking this might slow down Britain's most beloved Dame clearly doesn't know Judi.
Her solution? Having friends read scripts to her until she memorizes every word. "I've always had a photographic memory, thank god," she says. "Though now I suppose we should call it an audio memory."
That determination led to her scene-stealing role in 2022's "Spirited," where younger cast members reportedly had no idea she couldn't see them clearly during filming.
While Hollywood grapples with aging, Dench offers a masterclass in refusing to be sidelined. She's even ventured into tech, recently lending her distinctive voice to Meta's AI chatbot alongside John Cena – though she admits with characteristic wit that she's "not entirely sure what an AI is, darling."
At home, she finds joy in the simple things, like chatting with her foul-mouthed parrot Sweetie. "The bird has taken to calling me something rather rude," she confides. "But at my age, you learn to laugh at these things."
The recent loss of her dear friend Dame Maggie Smith has hit hard. During a public talk, she broke down while discussing their decades-long friendship. "Maggie would tell me to stop being so bloody dramatic," she said through tears, showing the raw humanity behind the icon.
Yet even as she navigates vision loss, grief, and the challenges of aging in the public eye, Dench remains defiantly active. She recently threw her weight behind saving historic trees at Ripon Cathedral, proving that neither AMD nor age can dim her passion for the causes she believes in.
"People keep asking when I'll retire," she says. "I tell them I'll retire when I can no longer hear the words 'Action!' And even then, they'll probably have to drag me off set."