[NFBWATlk] Fwd: Judi Dench discusses working while losing her sight: 'I've had to find another way'

[Denise Mackenstadt]

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Denise Mackenstadt
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Begin forwarded message:

> From: Merribeth Greenberg via NFBWATlk <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
> Date: March 1, 2021 at 12:22:22 PM PST
> To: wcb-l <wcb-l at wcbinfo.org>, NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Merribeth Greenberg <merribeth.manning at gmail.com>
> Subject: [NFBWATlk] Judi Dench discusses working while losing her sight: 'I've had to find another way'
> Reply-To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
> 
> Judi Dench discusses working while losing her sight: 'I've had to find
> another way'
> One thing she's not doing is hiding out; Dench says she'll continue working.
> Feb. 26, 2021, 3:25 PM EST / Source: TODAY
> By Randee Dawn
> 
> Dame Judi Dench has been a presence on TV and film screens for 60 years,
> and at 86, she's not planning to stop acting anytime soon.
> 
> That enough would be inspiring, but Dench is currently battling an issue
> that makes it positively extraordinary: She's losing her vision.
> 
> Currently suffering from age-related macular degeneration, which affects
> nearly 11 million people
> <https://www.brightfocus.org/sources-macular-degeneration-facts-figures#:~:text=Macular%20degeneration%20is%20a%20leading,years%20of%20age%20and%20older.&text=Advanced%20age%2Drelated%20macular%20degeneration,visual%20impairment%20in%20the%20world.&text=As%20many%20as%2011%20million,of%20age%2Drelated%20macular%20degeneration.>
> in
> the United States, Dench recently told The Guardian
> <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/25/you-find-a-way-judi-dench-on-working-through-sight-loss>
> that
> while she may have to adjust her life and work styles, she's not going to
> retire.
> 
> "You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you
> find very difficult," she said. "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!"
> 
> The petite, white-haired, no-nonsense actor is familiar to American
> audiences from her turns in films like "Shakespeare in Love" (for which she
> won her Oscar); "Mrs. Brown," "Victoria & Abdul," "Skyfall" (and several
> other modern James Bond films) and "Philomena," among others.
> 
> She's also delighted us in recent years by getting a tattoo at 81
> <https://www.today.com/popculture/judi-dench-gets-first-ever-tattoo-age-81-see-what-t100410>
> and
> being the oldest person on the cover of British Vogue
> <https://www.today.com/style/judi-dench-85-oldest-british-vogue-cover-star-ever-t180718>
> at
> 85.
> 
> The loss of her sight, Dench explained, appears to be genetic: Her mother
> also had some sight loss; her daughter, Finty, "goes and has her eyes
> checked" regularly.
> 
> Still, she noted what she considers an upside: "It does enable you to do
> one thing and that is that you have to get very close to people before you
> can recognize who they are. During lockdown I made a film and I was up
> close addressing people wearing masks during rehearsals, nothing to do with
> any scene I'm in. It's kind of exquisite if you can do that and that's the
> good side of it, and you have to look at that side of it."
> 
> And you have to admire that Dench can even laugh a bit at the way her body
> is changing.
> 
> "I was doing 'The Winter’s Tale' with Ken Branagh a couple of years ago,
> playing Paulina, and after we had been running for three weeks or so at the
> Garrick (Theater) 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) arch," she said.
> 
> Then she laughed: "I rely on people to tell me!"
> 
> 
> https://www.today.com/today/amp/tdna210187
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