'So one afternoon I took myself to the Aldwych Theatre and saw a production of King Lear in which he was playing the Fool and I stood for the first time in my life in the presence of truly great acting. It was effortless reality and compassion and humanity and wit and pathos and it was all at the service of the play and of his fellow performers and it was a spine-tingling connection to great art, it was simple and it was profound. And years later I got to know him, and his wife, and I found a remark that he made to her to be very true. He said that you can never be more on stage, than you are in life and by this time I knew in his case it was true. I knew about his enormous heart, his warmth and his intelligence and I knew for sure that what I'd seen all those years ago had been no accident and I was always too shy to tell him because he's like me, he's easily embarrassed, but I want to tell him tonight, because he's here, that I left that performance of his feeling that if any part of my professional career could approach what he did in that role, that I would die a happy man.'
etc.

also enjoyed this, from much younger times.

all because of hamlet.

as for the four-hundred-and-something-year-old, well, no one produces a greater hangover.