Academy Award-winning actor Mark Rylance said he delayed getting the coronavirus vaccine after the promoters of it began taking a more dogmatic, less scientific approach.
Speaking with the Sunday Times, the English actor commented on the upcoming play he co-wrote and stars in, Dr. Semmelweis, which chronicles the life of a “brilliant 19th-century Hungarian doctor who is driven mad by the Viennese medical establishment’s refusal to listen to him.” Special correspondent Josh Glancy acknowledged the man’s great contribution to science.
“Semmelweis became convinced that germs were spread by dirty hands and argued that regular hand-washing could drastically reduce the incidence of so-called childbed fever, saving the lives of thousands of mothers,” Glancy said. “He was right but sadly ignored, decades before Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister were lauded for the same conclusions.”
Glancy noted Rylance’s play serves as a “warning not to take the overweening scientific establishment at its word, particularly since the pandemic.”
Rylance agreed, charging that “science started to sound like a religion” during the pandemic.
“And really science is no different than religion, just an attempt by men to describe reality,” Rylance said.
On the vaccine, Rylance said that he resisted it for some time.
Academy Award-winning actor Mark Rylance in a scene from ‘Dunkirk’ (Courtesy Warner Bros.)
“I was not convinced I needed it. I took a very distilled garlic solution every morning, and vitamin C, and I sailed through Jerusalem,” Rylance said.
Rylance said he eventually got the vaccine only to visit his father in America.
Glancy asked Rylance about another contrarian view he had – that of the Russian war in Ukraine. Rylan reportedly put the blame on “Nato for ‘moving in on the Russians’” and that the West has “never taken Russia’s wartime sacrifices seriously enough.”
Rylance argued that Russia has never been given its alleged due for fighting Nazi Germany during World War II and that the Russian people will gladly fall for a man like Vladimir Putin selling this narrative.
“Look how vulnerable your Jewish people are having lost six million — the Russians lost 26 to 40 million people killing fascism in Europe. We didn’t do it. The Americans didn’t do it. We stood back until the Russians had really knocked the shit out of them,” he said.
Mark Rylance and Joanna McCallum together on stage in Hamlet by William Shakespeare. (Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images)
“And yet all my life, have we ever celebrated and thanked the Russians for dealing with fascism? No, we’ve just glorified ourselves,” he added. “Of course, the people will fall for a dictator like Putin and believe his narrative . . . because of the way we’ve behaved.”
Rylance made headlines in 2019 when he quit the Royal Shakespeare Company after it accepted sponsorship from the big oil company British Petroleum (BP). Rylance likened the oil company to an arms dealer.
“I feel I must resign as I do not wish to be associated with BP any more than I would with an arms dealer, a tobacco salesmen, or any company or individual who willfully destroys the lives of others alive and unborn. Nor do I believe would William Shakespeare,” he said in his resignation letter.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed on Tubi, Google Play, YouTube Movies, or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.