"I just want to go on being mobile and able to do things. I'm not going to be beaten by my eyes. I have macular degeneration but you just have to settle for it.
"On my scripts, my font is point-size 22, so you can imagine ... It's ridiculous, it's a farce but I'm not going to give in."
She refused to consider retirement and claimed that she fully intended on carrying on with acting.
"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."
Other veteran actresses with tattoos include Dame Helen Mirren, aged 70, who has been inked with interlocking Vs on her left hand.
She previously claimed she had tattoo done while "very drunk" when acting with an American Indian theatre group in Minnesota as a young woman.
And Prime Minister David Cameron's wife Samantha has a dolphin tattoo on her right ankle.