Judi Dench, 90, says worsening eye condition prevents her from recognizing friends.

Dame Judi Dench has revealed the extent of her worsening eyesight, admitting she can no longer recognise friends.

The renowned actress, 90, was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration in 2012, which can cause permanent and rapid central vision loss, and is the number one cause of vision loss in people over 50.

She has now revealed that her eyesight has detoriated so much that she can’t watch television, see to read or recognise faces.  

Speaking alongside her friend and colleague of 50 years Sir Ian McKellen to promote  a new Shakespeare teaching resource, Judi commented on the fact she has rarely appeared on camera in recent years.

‘No, because I can’t see anymore,’ she explained to ITV News. Her friend Ian sweetly quipped ‘we can see you,’ to which Judi noted: ‘Yes and I can see your outline and I know you so well with your Macbeth scarf. But I can’t recognise anyone.’

‘People think “oh get her, she’s got very grand” but it’s because I can’t see. I can’t see the television, can’t see to read.’

‘Do you go up to total strangers and just say to them “lovely to see you again,”‘ Ian asked. ‘Yes sometimes!’ the actress replied laughing. 

During a 2021 event for the London-based Vision Foundation, Judi opened up about how she struggles to read scripts due to her rapidly fading vision.

She said: ‘You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult.

‘I’ve had to find another way of learning lines and things, which is having great friends of mine repeat them to me over and over and over again.

‘So I have to learn through repetition, and I just hope that people won’t notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!’

Judi also told The Graham Norton Show about how she battles to memorise lines as she used to rely on her photographic memory.

She added: ‘I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page.

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

It comes after Judi cast doubt over the future of her film career amid her battle with age-related macular degeneration of her eyes.

The veteran actress has not acted on the big screen since 2022’s Allelujah, limiting her screen appearances in the past few years to documentaries, where she appeared as herself.

And in May, she admitted that she has no future projects in the pipeline while struggling with her ailing sight.

Asked if she has any plans for more acting jobs, Judi told a journalist at the Chelsea Flower show: ‘No, no, I can’t even see!’

But towards the end of 2022, she had refused to give up and insisted she wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon – despite admitting the condition even then was ‘bad’.

She told Louis Theorux on his BBC show: ‘I don’t want to retire. I’m not doing much at the moment because I can’t see. It’s bad.

‘I have a photographic memory so a person saying to me, ”This is your line…” I can do that .’

Around the same time, Judi revealed that while out for dinner with her partner David Mills, he had to cut up her food for her as she couldn’t see it on her plate.

‘He cut it up and handed something to me on a fork and that’s the way I ate it,’ she explained. 

Whilst Judi is not taking on any major acting roles at present she has returned to the small screen for a new Christmas ad.

Appearing alongside her friend Dame Imelda Staunton, the actresses have teamed up to appear in an advert for ShelterBox, a disaster relief charity that provides essential items to people who have lost their homes.