Judi Dench on retirement: 'No!'

Dame Judi Dench has rejected any talk of retirement and said she hopes to die in a theatre dressing room after a performance. 

The Oscar-winning actress, 91, made the remarks in an interview with The Times. She said she wants to be like actor Newton Blick, who died in his dressing room after a show.

Asked whether it was time to put her feet up, Dench replied: “No, it bloody well isn’t.” 

She said she would like to “banish” the words “retire”, “vintage” and “old” from the conversation. She is just as unimpressed by the label “national treasure”. “Loathe it,” she said. 

She has said before that retirement is the rudest word in her dictionary.

Reports say she hopes to live to 100, and that turning 90 made her a little nervous, though she is grateful to have reached it when two friends, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Maggie Smith, have died. 

She added that she can still get from A to B and walk about.

Dench has age-related macular degeneration, the same condition her mother had, which she was diagnosed with in 2012. 

She said she copes by relying on other people and often pretending she can see properly. 

“I’m quite good at acting as if I can see,” she said. She has said before that she can no longer read scripts and relies on having them read to her.

In May 2024, she suggested her film career might be over, saying she couldn’t even see, though she prefers the stage in any case.

Dench also looked back on her years playing M in the James Bond films.

It was great, she said, to be able to tell all those men where to get off. She shut down reports that she cried when she learned she was being replaced in the franchise. 

“Of course I didn’t cry,” she said.

Dench began her professional career at the Old Vic in 1957 and won her Oscar for her cameo as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.