Geoffrey Palmer ('As Time Goes By' - Lionel) passed away in 2020 at age 93.
Snippet of opening sound track
For over ten years, Dench, 88, has been suffering from age-related macular degeneration, a condition that causes one's eyesight to worsen over time. Now, she's revealing that it's gotten so bad that she can no longer read scripts or memorize lines for acting jobs.
"It has become impossible," she said on Friday's episode of "The Graham Norton Show."
She said that she "used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of ’Twelfth Night’ right now."
In a 2014 statement, the "James Bond" actress said she didn't want her condition to be "overblown" in the media, and that "It's something that I have learnt to cope with and adapt to - and it will not lead to blindness."
However, macular degeneration does affect the central vision, which can make everyday tasks extremely difficult or, as she said in her recent interview, impossible.
"And because I have a photographic memory," she continued, "I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page."