Dame Judi Dench on that one time she bared all in the bath

Veteran British actress Dame Judi Dench is no stranger to the spotlight but it’s not very often she has gone fully nude. Barring the one time she accidentally bared all while getting into the bath.

Speaking on The Zoe Ball Show recently, Dame Judi recalled the time her daughter, Finty Williams, called just as she was about to enjoy a long soak in the bath to ask if she could wish fellow actor, Chris Logan, a happy birthday.

According to Page Six, she said, “I picked up my phone, and I said, ‘Chris, happy, happy …’ and I just saw these two people turn and [make shocked faces].”

She was referencing Logan and fellow actor Ben Whishaw.

“Well, it was FaceTiming them,” she explained.

“I don’t know about FaceTime. Poor Chris.”

British radio presenter Zoe Ball joked that it was an incomparable message.

“What a birthday message. You can’t top that, though, can you?” she said.

Besides being open about her misadventures with nudity, Dame Judi has also recently spoken candidly about her healthy attitude towards ageing especially in the face of her age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that has severely impaired her vision.

“We’ve got to keep going and not think of age too much,” said the beloved actress, sitting for an upcoming episode of Portrait Artist of the Year.

 “You have to think you are about 56.”

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show earlier this year, she revealed that the disease — which blurs the eye’s sharp, straight-ahead vision — has now reached the point that she can no longer read scripts or see much on set.

“It has become impossible and because I have a photographic memory, I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” she told Norton.

“I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of Twelfth Night right now.”

Not one to be defeated, Dame Judi has found a way around her limited vision so that she can continue acting.

“You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult,” she said.

The multi-award-winning star’s new line learning strategy is to ask her many thespian friends to repeat them to her “over and over and over again”.

“So I have to learn through repetition, and I just hope that people won’t notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!” she said.

While she describes her condition as “intensely irritating” she sees the funny side of having limited eyesight and says, “you have to get very close to people before you can recognise who they are”.

“During lockdown I made a film and I was up close addressing people wearing masks during rehearsals, nothing to do with any scene I’m in,” she explained.

“It’s kind of exquisite if you can do that and that’s the good side of it, and you have to look at that side of it.”