Judi Dench talks about her major sight problems which makes her job as an actress very complicated.
As reported by People and Variety, it was in a new interview on the set of the Graham Norton Show that Judi Dench said that it was now very hard for her to learn her lines of dialogue because of her loss of sight.
It became impossible and as I just discovered that I had a photographic memory, […] I need to find a machine that not only teaches me the phrase but also tells me it’s at the top of page 17 or something! I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do all of Twelfth Night right now!
BUT THAT DOES NOT PREVENT IT FROM ROTATING
In a 2021 chat with the Vision Foundation, a London charity for people with sight loss, Judi Dench also revealed that she asks her close friends to help her memorize her new scripts by reading them aloud because repeating the dialogue helps.
“You find a way to cope and overcome the things you find very difficult“, she said at the time. “I had to find another way to learn lines and things, which was to have good friends of mine repeat them to me over and over. So I have to learn by repetition and just hope people don’t notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!”
Judi Dench remained in good spirits, however, even sharing how her loss of sight contributed to some funny moments, especially on stage: “I was doing The Winter’s Tale with Kenneth Branagh a few years ago I was playing Paulina, and after we played for about three weeks at the Garrick, he said to me – I have a long speech at the end – he said, ‘Judi, if you uttered this speech about eight feet to your right, you would say it to me and not to the stage arc.’ I rely on people to tell me!”
But that doesn’t seem to be stopping the actress, who last year earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. She recently made a guest appearance in the Christmas musical Spirited with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds and starred in Richard Eyre’s 2022 drama Allelujah, based on Alan Bennett’s play of the same name. Next year, we will find her in Italian Shoes, still by Kenneth Branagh, alongside Anthony Hopkins.