Judi Dench hints film career might be over after 60 years

Judi Dench appears to have casually announced that her time on film might have come to an end.

The Oscar-winning British star, 89, last appeared in the 2022 movie Spirited, starring as herself in Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds’ Christmas musical comedy film.

However, approached by a journalist while attending the Chelsea Flower Show in London, she revealed she had no further projects on the go, responding: “No, no, I can’t even see!”

Publications approaching Dench’s agent for comment were told that there was nothing further to add.

Dench suffers from age-related macular degeneration of her eyes, a condition that affects around 700,000 people in the UK.

She spoke about her struggles with her sight with documentary presenter Louis Theroux in 2022, telling him: “I don’t want to retire. I’m not doing much at the moment because I can’t see. It’s bad.”

She added: “I have a photographic memory so a person saying to me, ‘This is your line...’ I can do that.”

Widely regarded as one of the UK’s greatest and most versatile actors, Dench began her career on stage with the Old Vic theatre company, performing roles in several Shakespeare plays including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

She appeared in films such as James Ivory’s A Room with a View in 1998 before achieving international fame as M, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, in James Bond movie GoldenEye in 1995. She reprised the role in eight further films until her last cameo in 2015’s Spectre.

Among her other most notable roles to date are as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the 1999 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress; Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice (2005), and Queen Victoria twice, in Mrs Brown and Victoria and Abdul.

Dench was made emotional at the Chelsea Flower Show upon being presented with the first seedling from the Sycamore Gap tree that was illegally felled last year.

After being given the plant by a primary school pupil, Dench said: “I’ll be naming him Antonius, the adopted son of the Emperor Hadrian.”

King Charles III was then presented with the seedling on Sunday 26 May, when it was announced that it will be planted in Windsor Great Park for visitors to enjoy, the National Trust said.

“Part of the power of trees to move and console us lies in the continuity and hope they represent: the sense that, rooted in the past and flourishing in the present, their seeds will be carried into an as yet unimaginable future,” the statement said.

The National Trust said that Dench, who is famously passionate about trees, was “very concerned” after hearing the news about the tree felling at its famous spot at a dip in Hadrian’s Wall, in the Northumberland National Park.

She has a private forest filled with what she calls “memorial trees”, which were planted in remembrance of actors and figures in the arts, including Alan Rickman, Helen McCrory, Natasha Richardson, John Gielgud and Stephen Sondheim.

Asked how she began the tradition, Dench told Theroux: “Well, I love them. I love trees and I just thought what a nice thing that would be to do.”

The tree dedicated to Dench’s husband Michael Williams, who died in 2001 of lung cancer, is simply labelled “Mike”.

Dench said: “There’s Mikey. It’s a lovely tree, he liked it very much. We didn’t plant that one, that was here. It seems only right, as he found the house. I like that.”

She first discussed her “memorial trees” in a 2017 BBC documentary about her love of nature.

“It is about remembering, but it’s through a living thing, so you don’t remember them and stop,” she said. “The memory goes on, and gets more wonderful.”