Judi Dench gets candid on vision problem

Judi Dench, who is suffering from macular degeneration that leads to gradual loss of vision, says she usually gets thicker scripts which has the typeface enlarged. “So, if six of us were coming in to read a sonnet they’d all have one piece of paper and I’d have two or three,” people.com quoted Dench as saying.

“They’d think, ‘why does she have a bigger part?’ when it’s all the same,” she added.

The 80-year-old’s fading eyesight also prevents her from painting. She explained: “I paint a lot and now I find it very, very difficult because if I look at something and then look back here, my eyes don’t adjust quickly enough to actually transfer that.”

“Then I thought, ‘That’s what’s painting is about... My eyes only affect me if I’m somewhere dark and there are steps and I don’t see very well. I couldn’t go on the (London) Underground now without somebody because I couldn’t work a machine... I’m not going to make it something that’s going to stop me.”