Judi Dench ‘Forced Herself To Recover’ From Surgery For Movie Premiere

The much loved Dame Judi Dench apparently “forced herself” to recover from the knee surgery she had six weeks ago. This was so that she could walk down the red carpet at the premiere of her upcoming movie Philomena.

Dench had suffered from excruciating pain in her knee for a number of years. When the pain was simply too much for her to bear, she underwent a complex operation to fix the problem once and for all.

The 78-year-old icon couldn’t believe how far she had come so soon after her surgery: “The scars from here to here, there to there. I have a completely new knee now. It’s brilliant,” She said.

Judi Dench spoke more about her determination to walk down the red carpet at her movie premiere: “When I had it (operation) done Sept 6, I said to my surgeon ‘On October 16 I will walk up a red carpet unaided’, and so I did. You just have to set your mind to a goal and go for it,” She said.

She joked with reporters about the fact that she doesn’t feel her age:

I’m not feeling my age at all. I am about 43, a tall willowy blonde 43-year-old with long legs. I don’t want to slow down at all. We don’t say the word retirement in our house. Old and retired are totally banned. Energy keeps me going. We (actors) are in the minority of people who are doing a job we chose to do and can make a living at. Why aren’t we running to work every day?

Dame Judi’s knee operation aren’t the only health issues the star has suffered from in her more senior years. The BBC website reported last year about the fact that Dench has age-related macular degeneration (AMD) a condition affecting her eyesight and making it challenging to read scripts.

Judi Dench said at the time about her condition: “I can’t read scripts any more before because of the trouble with my eyes. And so somebody comes and reads them to me, like telling me a story.”