A new start after 60: ‘I almost died of cancer. Then I became an actor – at 63!’

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Julian Bird was a psychiatrist when he was diagnosed with bladder cancer – and began daydreaming about being an actor. Seventeen years later, he is playing the lead at a London theatre

hen Julian Bird was 60, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder. He had a series of operations, “all very unpleasant”, and learned that he “was likely to die pretty soon”. After 34 years as a psychiatrist, in that intense state of mind, he began to daydream about becoming a professional actor.

An only child, at 13 he went to boarding school. “There were lonely times,” he says. “Every time I returned, there would be somebody else looking after me, a housekeeper/secretary.” His parents were delighted. Bird studied natural sciences at Cambridge, before going on to medical school in London. He had scarcely dabbled in Cambridge’s drama scene for fear of profiting from his mother’s renown, but in London he directed and starred in a production of The Doctor’s Dilemma.

 

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