LONDON — Actress Judi Dench is battling to save her sight.
The James Bond star said in an interview published Saturday that she had been diagnosed with macular degeneration, an eye condition that can cause blindness, and that her eyesight was already so bad that she couldn’t read her own scripts.
The 77-year-old told the Daily Mirror that she was relying on friends and family to keep her up to speed with her lines.
“It’s usually my daughter or my agent or a friend, and actually I like that because I sit there and imagine the story in my mind,” she told the newspaper during an interview at a London hotel. “The most distressing thing is in a restaurant in the evening I can’t see the person I’m having dinner with.”
The Mirror didn’t say exactly where or when the interview took place. Messages left for Dench’s agent were not immediately returned Saturday.
Dench won an Academy Award for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” and is best-known to international audiences as intelligence boss M in the James Bond series.
The Associated Press
