I know why Brian has lasted this long in spite of falling out of helicopters and off mountains and into lakes all his life: he started the whole being-cold-keeps-you-healthy thing years before Wim Hof was doing his motivational speaking. Once, when we were shooting Ken Branagh’s Henry V at Shepperton, it was very cold out. I went to visit Brian in his dressing room.
I was in my costume for the Princess of France, a lovely off-the-shoulder number. All the windows were open. Brian started to tell me a story about Everest.
I sat there, fascinated, getting colder and colder. He noticed – after some time – and said: “Thompson, why are you wearing blue lipstick?” I tried to speak but my jaw had frozen in its sockets. He bundled me out into the heated corridors where I spent a good hour getting my body up to a functioning temperature.
I took a cold shower every day after that. The man is a legend: a force, a mighty wind and a great tree of life. He has the soul of a mountain-top.
I will always love him deeply and appreciate his kindness to a young actress, his wit and fun and energy and gaiety, his loudness and his madness. We first worked together at Birmingham Rep in 1960 when we would do a different play every month. It was my first job and he was the star of the show.
He was still in his 20s but had a huge personality even then. I ended up sharing a dressing room with him, which was an education in itself. He was not particularly restrained – not when it came to pissing in the sink!
Extract — continue reading at the source.
