Dame Judi Dench has cast doubt over the future of her film career.
The Oscar-winning actress, 89, has not appeared on the big screen since she starred in 2022’s Spirited and admitted that she has no future projects in the pipeline amid her battles with her ailing sight.
Asked if she has any plans for more acting jobs, she told a journalist at the Chelsea Flower show: ‘No, no, I can’t even see!’
The Mirror report that when an agent for the Philomena star was approached about a clarification on Judi’s comments, they insisted that there was nothing more to say.
Her agent said: Judi has nothing more to add than all she mentioned to the journalist.’
Dame Judi Dench has cast doubt over the future of her film career as she continues to deal with her ailing sight
Asked if she has any plans for more acting jobs, she told a journalist at the Chelsea Flower show : ‘No, no, I can’t even see!’
But towards the end of 2022, Judi refused to give up and said she won’t be retiring anytime soon despite the condition – even though she admitted then that it 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 recently 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.
According to the NHS, ‘age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common condition that affects the middle part of your vision. It usually first affects people in their 50s and 60s’.
Speaking this week though Dame Judi explained she was busy with off screen projects, explaining: ‘Our book has come out (Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent), we’re going to Cheltenham Book Fair and then I’m going to do three shows with Gyles Brandreth’.
In 2022, Judi said she was determined to ‘teach’ herself a new way of learning amid her battle with her sight
The actress talked candidly about her health battle to BBC’s Louis Theroux in 2022
The acclaimed actress has been active on stage and screen since the late 1950s but hinted that now it could all be over
The star is known for her role in films including the Bond franchise. Pictured in Skyfall with Daniel Craig
The actress shed a tear during her appearance at the Chelsea Flower Show after being presented with a seedling from the famous Sycamore Gap tree.
The centuries-old landmark, situated next to Hadrian’s Wall, was chopped down by vandals last year.
T he veteran actress wiped her eye as she received the seedling from seven-year-old Charlotte Crowe of Henshaw CE Primary School in Northumberland.
Of the seedling, she said: ‘I’ll be naming him Antoninus, the adopted son of the Emperor Hadrian.’
The National Trust said Dame Judi is ‘passionate about trees’ and had been ‘very concerned by the news of the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree’.
The seedling – grown from seeds taken from the tree felled last September – will be planted in the Octavia Hill garden at the show, commemorating the founder of the National Trust.
It will then rejoin other seedlings to continue to grow at the Trust’s National Conservation centre in Devon.