It’s ‘Impossible’ for Me to Act Because of Sight Loss

A heartbreaking replace. Judi Dench revealed that her eyesight is making it troublesome for her to memorize scripts for new roles.

“It has become impossible,” the Oscar winner, 88, defined throughout a Friday, February 17, look on The Graham Norton Show. “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.”

The Cats actress went on to say that she beforehand had no issues studying complete scripts rapidly. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them,” the U.Ok. native recalled. “I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”

The Tony Award winner hasn’t slowed down simply but, nonetheless. She’s presently selling her movie Allelujah, which is predicated on Alan Bennett‘s play of the identical identify. In 2021, she appeared in Kenneth Branagh‘s Oscar-winning film Belfast, incomes an Academy Award nomination for her efficiency as Granny.

Dench revealed in 2012 that she was recognized with age-related macular degeneration. “I do not wish for this to be overblown,” she instructed Reuters in a press release on the time. “This condition is something that thousands and thousands of people all over the world are having to contend with. It’s something that I have learnt to cope with and adapt to — and it will not lead to blindness.”

Nearly 10 years later, she opened up about how she’d tailored to her situation, studying to memorize her strains through repetition.

“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she defined throughout a February 2021 charity occasion for London’s Vision Foundation. “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!”

Despite the problem, the Shakespeare in Love actress quipped that her situation sometimes leads to some humorous moments. “I was doing The Winter’s Tale with Ken Branagh a couple of years ago, playing Paulina, and after we had been running for three weeks or so … 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 [proscenium] arch,’” Dench recalled. “I rely on people to tell me!”