How bad-ass is Dame Judi Dench?

As if we couldn’t possibly love the Oscar-winning actress any more, she’s only gone and got herself a tattoo to mark her 81^st birthday. The tattoo itself sits on the inside of her right wrist and says ‘Carpe Diem’ which is Latin for seize the day and was a gift from her daughter Finty Williams. The star, who is perhaps best known as M in the James Bond films typifies the tenacity and fierceness of her on screen persona. In a media landscape which obsesses and idolises young women it is so refreshing to see older actresses still able to break taboos. She refuses to let her age define her, defiantly stating that she has no plans to retire just yet.

“It’s an awful word retirement. I see it as a step back in a way, a step down. And if you give up on one thing then it seems to me that you might as well give up on another and so on, when it’s so much better to keep the mind active.”

Dame Judi is even keener on seizing each day as it comes in light of being diagnosed with macular degeneration, a condition which causes severe vision loss most commonly found in people over the age of 60. She has been vocal about her condition, which requires regular treatment in an interview with Surrey Life, saying

“I just want to go on being mobile and able to do things. I’m not going to be beaten by my eyes”

We salute you Dame Dench, they say that youth is wasted on the young anyways and I’m beginning to think that they have a point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI3MWLRsu2g