Judi Dench can no longer distinguish a face from one meter away.
She was diagnosed with macular degeneration in 2012, and the disease progressed until it erased the center of her vision. She can recognize silhouettes, but she can’t read a script or see a television screen. Sometimes she greets strangers in the street, thinking they are friends, and other times she unintentionally ignores someone she knows, something she has even been reproached for as if she were arrogant, when in reality she simply can’t see them.
She left traditional theater stages, but she did not leave Shakespeare. Now she teaches young students to perform it, relying on a photographic memory that she built over decades of her career, while family and friends read the texts aloud to her so that she can memorize them.
Days before turning 91, she told Radio Times magazine that both eyes had reached a point where no treatment was possible anymore. She herself chose the word to describe it: “a crusher”, something that crushes. And yet, she continues teaching.
