Actress Dame Judi Dench is battling blindness. The respected British star, best known for playing M in the James Bond movies, told the British newspaper “The Daily Mirror” that she suffers from age-related macular degeneration.
"I can't read scripts anymore because of the trouble with my eyes,” she said. “And so somebody comes in and reads them to me, like telling me a story. It's usually my daughter or my agent or a friend and actually I like that, because I sit there and imagine the story in my mind. I've got what my ma had, macular degeneration, which you get when you get old. They had to do these injections and I think it's arrested it. I hope so. The most distressing thing is in a restaurant in the evening I can't see the person I'm having dinner with."
Although Dench, 77, is best known for her appearances in the recent Bond movies, she’s had a decades-long career in the British theater as well, and has more than once been named Britain’s best actress in polls. She starred in the long-running TV series “As Time Goes By” and won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare In Love.”
Macular degeneration, or age-related macular degeneration, is a leading cause of vision loss in Americans 60 and older. It is a disease that destroys central vision (as opposed to peripheral, or side, vision.) There are two types of macular degeneration. Dry macular degeneration is more common and less severe. Wet macular degeneration almost always begins as dry macular degeneration. It's not clear what causes wet macular degeneration to develop. Dench said she had wet in one eye and dry in another.
