Judi Dench shares update on 'deteriorating eyesight'

Judi Dench is getting candid about her worsening eyesight conditions, making her lines difficult to learn.

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show, the James Bond star opened up about her age-related degenerative eye condition spilling over to her acting career.

"It has become impossible, and because I have a photographic memory, I need to find a machine that teaches me my lines and tells me where they appear on the page," the 88-year-old added.

"I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now."

The Oscar winner has been dogged by macular degeneration for over a decade. Earlier, the veteran actor revealed how she copes with the problem.

"You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult," she added.

"I've had to find another way of learning lines and things, which is having great friends of mine repeat them to me repeatedly.

I was doing The Winter's Tale with Kenneth Branagh a couple of years ago, playing Paulina. After we had been running for three weeks or so at the Garrick, he said to me — I have a long speech at the end — he said: 'Judi if you were to say that speech about eight feet to your right, you'd be saying it to me and not to the [proscenium].' I rely on people to tell me!"

However, Dench is still determined to work in films. Her new outing was the movie Allelujah, based on a 2018 Alan Bennett play set in a geriatric ward.