Dame Judi Dench says she still remembers all the Shakespeare she has performed, but keeps forgetting what she is “doing tomorrow”.
In a new interview, the Oscar winner talked about ageing and losing her eyesight, days ahead of her 91st birthday on Tuesday.
“I can’t remember what I am doing tomorrow, I swear to you,” Dench told Radio Times.
The actor said she felt “lucky to still be able to remember great reams of Shakespeare”, which she has been performing her whole life.
In 2012, Dench revealed she had age-related macular degeneration, a degenerative eye condition described as the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK, affecting nearly 700,000 people, according to the Macular Society.
While the condition doesn’t cause total blindness, it can make doing everyday activities quite difficult.
Dench described her condition as a “crusher” and said she missed being able to watch the television.
“Well, I miss seeing Clive Myrie doing Mastermind but I can hear the questions,” she said, explaining that her eyes were now in the “wet” stage of the condition, the most severe stage.
When asked if the television stayed on so she could hear it, she said: “Yes, that’s what it is now.”
In January this year, Dench said she now had to do red carpets with someone always with her.
“Somebody will always be with me,” she told Trinny Woodall on her Fearless podcast. “I have to now because I can’t see and I will walk into something or fall over.”
“I’m always nervous before going to something. I’ve no idea why,” the actor added. “I am not good at that at all. Not at all. Nor would I be now. And fortunately, I don’t have to be now because I pretend to have no eyesight.”
She also spoke about working with men in Hollywood who were later disgraced due to sexual assault allegations, like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey.
Spacey was first accused of sexual abuse in 2017 by actor Anthony Rapp, who claimed the incident occurred in 1986 when Spacey would have been 26 and Rapp 14.
Subsequently, over a dozen men came forward to accuse Spacey of sexual misconduct. The actor either denied the allegations or insisted the encounters were consensual.
Rapp’s allegations were dismissed by a Manhattan court in 2022. The following year, Spacey stood trial in the UK after four men alleged he had sexually assaulted them in separate incidents between 2001 and 2013. He was again cleared of all nine offences.
“Kevin has been exonerated and I hear from Kevin, we text,” she said of the actor, who she worked with in The Shipping News.
After allegations against Spacey surfaced, Dench defended him as a “good friend” and said she was unhappy at the way he was removed from Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World.
“I can’t approve, in any way, of the fact that – whatever he has done – that you then start to cut him out of the films,” she said.
“Are we to do that throughout history? Are we to go back throughout history and anyone who has misbehaved in any way, or who has broken the law, or who has committed some kind of offence, are they always going to be cut out?” she told journalists at the San Sebastian film festival in 2018.
“I saw a bit of film of Harvey walking with two sticks and you think, ‘Well…’” she said of the producer, who was convicted of rape in 2020 and jailed. “I knew Harvey and I knew him well and worked with him, and I had none of that experience – very fortunately for me. I imagine he's done his time. I don’t know, to me it’s personal – forgiveness.”
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