newsmakers

newsmakers

Judi Dench says she’s battling blindness

LONDON

Actress Judi Dench is battling to save her sight.

The James Bond star said in an interview published Saturday that she had been diagnosed with macular degeneration, an eye condition that can cause blindness, and that her eyesight already was so bad that she couldn’t even read her own scripts.

The 77-year-old told the Daily Mirror that she was relying on friends and family to keep her up to speed with her lines.

“It’s usually my daughter or my agent or a friend, and actually I like that, because I sit there and imagine the story in my mind,” she told the newspaper during an interview at a London hotel. “The most distressing thing is in a restaurant in the evening I can’t see the person I’m having dinner with.”

The Mirror didn’t say exactly where or when the interview took place. Messages left for Dench’s agent were not immediately returned Saturday.

Dench made her Shakespearean debut in 1957 at London’s Old Vic and since has taken on a vast number of theater, film and television roles.

She won an Academy Award for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” and is best known to international audiences as intelligence boss M in the James Bond series.

Rock Hall planning Walk of Fame

CLEVELAND

The names of current and future inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be captured in bronze for a Walk of Fame to be set into downtown-Cleveland sidewalks under a plan being considered by city officials.

The Plain Dealer reports that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum received Cleveland Planning Commission approval for the proposal Friday. The project also requires approval from city council, which plans to consider the matter Feb. 27.

The museum plans to unveil the first 17 plaques, to honor this year’s inductees, April 4 in advance of the April 14 induction ceremony at Cleveland’s Public Hall. They are being funded by the Rock Hall board for $5,000 each.

Sponsorship of other tiles will be auctioned at a yet-to-be determined price that will fund materials and installation and help defray costs of future Cleveland-sited induction ceremonies, which happen every three years, museum officials said.

A preliminary design for the rectangular plaques features a silhouette of the Rock Hall building designed by I.M. Pei and an artist’s name and induction year, as well as a place to recognize a donor. The plaques are to be flush-mounted in sidewalks in slabs of colored concrete and will have a rough finish to limit tripping.

Previously inducted artists will be honored with plaques between April 2012 and May 2014.

Rock Hall President and Chief Executive Terry Stewart told the Planning Commission that the museum brings about $100 million a year to the city as a tourist destination. Induction events are expected to generate about $15 million in local revenues, he said.

This year’s inductees are the Beastie Boys, Donovan, Guns N’ Roses, Laura Nyro, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Small Faces/The Faces, Freddie King, Don Kirshner, Cosimo Matassa, Tom Dowd, Glyn Johns, the Blue Caps, the Comets, the Crickets, the Famous Flames, the Midnighters and the Miracles.

Associated Press