The electrically controlled birefringence of nematic liquid crystal BL-009 was measured by polarized interference method. The influence of LC absorption effect, the birefringence variation, is discussed in this paper. The experiments results showed the influence to birefringence is big in infrared region. Not only the birefringence value is greatly different with that of unconsidering absorption effect, but also the gradient changing of birefringence curves is obvious. Furthermore, the electrically controlled birefringences of two conditions are compared when the absorption coefficients of ordinary light and the extraordinary light are nearly same and greatly different. The analysis demonstrated the approximate method of absorption coefficient is feasible.