Oscar Winner Judi Dench Hints Her 60-Year Acting Career Might Be at An End

Dame Judi Dench, who enjoys one of the world’s most glittering careers on both stage and screen, has hinted her time on film might be over for good.

The Oscar winner last appeared in the 2022 movie "Spirited", but this week when she attended the Chelsea Flower Show in London, she revealed she had no other movie projects in the pipeline, telling a journalist: “No, no. I can’t even see!”

Dench is 89 and suffers from macular degeneration of her eyes, a condition that affects 1.5million people in the UK. The age-related version (AMD) affects more than 700,000 people and is the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK, according to the Macular Society.

This is a change in attitude from her determination to carry on that she shared with presenter Louis Theroux during a TV interview in her home. She explained at the time: “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.”

Dench made her stage debut in 1957 and went on to become one of the world’s most revered classical actresses. 

She earned her Oscar for her eight-minute appearance as Queen Elizabeth I in the 1998 "Shakespeare in Love", and found a whole new fanbase with her role of M, James Bond’s boss at security service MI6, in eight of the films, beginning in 1995 with "GoldenEye" and ending with a cameo appearance in 2015’s "Spectre".