Judi Dench apparently doesn’t have any film roles coming down the pike, reports The Mirror. Asked at the Chelsea Flower Show this weekend if she had anything coming up, Dench replied, “No no, I can’t even see.” Asked for further comment, specifically whether this meant the Oscar and Tony winner was retiring, her agent replied: “Judi has nothing more to add than all she mentioned to the journalist.”
This does seem like a bit of a change in terms of how the Notes On A Scandal star has previously spoken about her declining eyesight and how it’s impacting her work. Early last year, during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, the actor said, “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.”
Later, in July, speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Dench sounded like she was not yet willing to hang up her career and was trying to make it work. “So I can’t see much. But you know you just deal with it. Get on,” she explained. “It’s difficult for me if I have any length of a part. 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
But this is an issue that the 89-year-old actor has been dealing with since at least 2017; that year, she said (via The Guardian) that friends will have to narrate the action in movies from the sidelines because it is difficult for Dench to see what’s going on on screen. “A friend of mine usually has to say: ‘He’s kissing her now’ or ‘He’s walking away.’ ... So a lot of things I miss—it’s not so much fun.”