Actress Judi Dench can no longer read or write due to vision problems

It was February 2012 when actress Judi Dench confessed that she suffered from a degenerative visual disease: macular degeneration that can lead to total blindness.

A little over a decade has passed, and now the 87-year-old interpreter has told in an interview for a BBC program how she feels, and things, as she explains, are not good.

“I don't want to retire.

I'm not doing much right now because I can't see.

The thing is wrong”, tells the award-winning documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux.

An interview in which she also tells that she is no longer able to read or write due to her vision problems.

In the preview of the program, which will be broadcast next week, the interpreter, with a recognized career spanning six decades in film, theater and television, gives some details about what her day-to-day life is like due to the illness she suffers from.

According to Dench, during a recent dinner in the company of her partner, David Mills – a naturalist eight years her junior – he had to cut her food.

“I went to a dinner a few weeks ago, a pretty big dinner.

It was so dark that I said to my partner David, who was next to me, 'do I have something on my plate?'

He said yes.

I said: 'Is it necessary to cut it?'

So he said, 'Yes.'

And I said, 'Would you?'

He cut it up and handed me something on a fork, and that's how I ate it,” she explains without losing her smile.

More information

Judi Dench calls 'The Crown' "cruel and unfair" to the crown and demands Netflix warn viewers that it is fiction

The winner of an Oscar (she has seven other nominations, in addition to two Golden Globes and nine BAFTAs) for her short interpretation of Queen Elizabeth in

(1998), also known for her role as M in several installments of the James Bond, assures in the interview that he wants to continue acting despite the advanced state of his macular degeneration.

She is determined to teach herself a new way of learning that allows her to remain linked to the world of acting, in which she will rely on her photographic memory.

And she claims to be surrounded by many people who can help her.

Last January, the British artist also spoke in another interview about how maintaining her independence over the years was becoming more and more difficult for her.

She did it in

magazine , in which she recounted how after tripping over a rug in her Surrey home — the setting in which she now hosts Theroux — she was on the floor for half an hour unable to get up.

Since she announced her illness, she has also explained her difficulties in recognizing faces or how the people around her read the scripts that come to her.

Macular degeneration is the most common cause of vision loss among elderly people, and is characterized by causing a progressive loss of central vision;

the first symptoms usually appear in the 50s or 60s.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BBC iPlayer (@bbciplayer)

After his interview, the documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, in whose program he will also interview artists such as rapper Stormzy or singer Rita Ora, said that what is perceived of the actress is her “unwillingness to accept her kind of status as a treasure widely recognized national

In fact, when he questions her about it, she gets an affectionate insult from Dench.

“Every time she goes out to do something of some depth, it's kind of a struggle because she wants to prove herself again, and then there's also a degree of insecurity about whether she's good enough, which makes her so extraordinary”.

Her tireless spirit is tattooed on her wrist: Carpe Diem, a tattoo she got to celebrate her 81st birthday.