Judi Dench Faces a Major Life Change, Putting Acting on Hold—What’s Happening to the Legendary Star? 💔✨

Judi Dench’s acting career could be ending soon.

The Academy Award winner was recently asked by a reporter at the Chelsea Flower Show in London if she had any upcoming projects.

Responded Dench, 89, “No, no. I can’t even see!”, per Deadline.

The Belfast actress has macular degeneration in her eyes, which can cause permanent and rapid central vision loss, according to the Mayo Clinic. It’s the No. 1 cause of vision loss in people over 50.

She first revealed that she was diagnosed with macular degeneration in 2012, after there was speculation about her eyesight.

Dench has spoken about retiring after over 65 years as a stage and screen actress, making her debut back in 1957. Her latest film appearance was in the 2022 Christmas comedy Spirited.

During a 2021 event for the London-based Vision Foundation, he explained how she had been coping with her eyesight worsening when it came to reading scripts.

“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” Dench admitted. “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.”

She added, “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!”

During a February 2023 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Dench noted that as her vision deteriorates, it becomes harder to memorize lines since she has a photographic memory.

“I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” the Philomena star said. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Nightright now.”

Despite not having any movies in the works, Dench co-wrote the memoir Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent with Brendan O’Hea, which hit bookshelves last month.

“Shakespeare is my passion,” she told PEOPLE at the time. “It used to be nine pence to go to the Old Vic and sit in the gallery, so we used to go and see Richard Burton and John Neville. This was before the Beatles, so the people used to just go mad. I never thought for one single second I would be part of that as my first job.”