Introduction
Brian Blessed is an English TV and film actor, presenter and mountaineer best known for his portrayal of Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon as well as roles in Blackadder, Z Cars and Star Wars the Phantom Menace. In 2017, he spoke with Cole Moreton from Event Magazine about meeting the reincarnation of his brother.
Although he is not a Buddhist, he has said that he does not believe in the existence of death. Namely, that he believes in reincarnation.
He is good friends with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader. They became friends through their shared interests and unique experiences. They bonded over their shared spirituality and their mutual love for adventure. Blessed even sparred with the Dalai Lama, who also enjoys boxing.
Reincarnation
His brother, Alan Blessed, died from leukaemia in 1996. During his illness, Brian was filming the TV movie Galahad of Everest and met up with his friend, the Dalai Lama. During their meeting, the Dalai Lama said to him about his brother, “When he dies you will see him again as a little boy in Halifax, Novia Scotia. He loves fishing. He will become a fisherman.”
Ten years later, in 2006, he was in Halifax, Novia Scotia in Canada filming The Conclave (a Canadian-German drama about the 1458 selection of a new Pope). While there, he saw a young boy who looked very much like his brother. He said, “My brother had been dead for five years. And there he was, with a Canadian accent, looking exactly as he had looked when he was a little boy in Yorkshire”.
He went on to say, “The boy’s father was a fisherman. I was very excited”. He spoke with the boy and his father and he did think about revealing that he believed the child was his brother. But he decided against it. He said, “I couldn’t say, ‘You’re my brother.’ One felt one couldn’t say that. But the boy liked me immensely. That was a comfort to me. Yeah. No one dies.”
His Views on Death
In 2022 he gave an interview to the NME’s Soundstrack of My Life series. He said, “I’m never gonna fucking die. Bollocks to death. As John Donne the poem said, ‘Death, thou shalt die’. The only thing that dies in life is death. I’ll live forever love. I’ll go on and on and on transcending different spheres. We are the children of stardust, yearning for stars. No love, you’ll never get me dying, fuck death. And I’ll not make a pact with old age. I’m sick of people making pacts with old age. It’s not how old you are, it’s how you are old”.