Judi Dench, the veteran English stage and film actress, said this month that her vision loss had progressed to the point that she no longer attended red-carpet premieres and other events alone.

“I have to now because I can’t see and I’ll walk into something,” Dench, who turned 90 last month, said in an interview on the podcast “Fearless” last week.

Dench, who played M in seven James Bond movies, began her acting career in the late 1950s. In 1988, Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame, the female equivalent of a knight.

In recent years, Dench has spoken about how her worsening eyesight has made it more difficult to work and read scripts. She told The Los Angeles Times in 2012 that she had macular degeneration, an eye problem that, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, is a leading cause of vision loss for people over 50. An estimated 19.8 million Americans over 40 had age-related macular degeneration in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an episode of the podcast “Fearless” that was released on January 14, Dench spoke about her vision loss with the host, Trinny Woodall, an English television personality known for her work on fashion makeover shows.

Woodall asked Dench how she had navigated high-profile theatre and film events during her career, and Dench said it was something she had not been good at when she had done it alone, before her vision deteriorated. “Nor would I be now,” she said.

“And fortunately, I don’t have to be now,” she added, laughing, “because I pretend to have no eyesight.”

A representative for Dench did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Dench told The Sunday Mirror in 2023 that she was trying to work as much as she could even though she could no longer see well enough to read. “I mean I can’t see on a film set anymore,” she said.

“It’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part,” she said. “I haven’t yet found a way. Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script. But I have a photographic memory.”

New York Times News Service