Mark Rylance was ‘not convinced’ over Covid-19 vaccine that ’caused alarm bells’

Sir Mark Rylance was “not convinced” that he needed the Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic, and an insistence that he needed it sparked “alarm bells” in his mind.

Although he ultimately did get the jab, so he could visit his father in America, the 63-year-old told The Sunday Times that he used a distilled garlic solution and vitamin C daily to keep healthy while performing in the hit stage play Jerusalem.

He explained his cynicism, saying that in the midst of lockdowns and quarantine restrictions, “science started to sound like a religion.

“And really science is no different than religion, just an attempt by men to describe reality,” he said.

The Bridge of Spies star added that “the body knows how to heal itself”, a belief which extended beyond the pandemic too as he criticised chemotherapy.

Sir Mark claimed he has a friend who “broke up the cells of a tumour” through sound therapy, using vibrations from a Tibetan sound bowl.

The Oscar-winner argued that extreme medical treatments like chemotherapy is “like bombing a city to try and get rid of a little sect of terrorists.

“You may wipe them all out, but you’re going to breed 25 or 30 (more),” he insisted.

His return to one of his most notorious stage roles, as Johnny Byron, in last year’s revival of the play Jerusalem earned Sir Mark critical acclaim and now the 63-year-old is preparing for his upcoming play, Dr Semmelweis.

The actor lent his hand in co-writing the play, with playwright Stephen Brown, and it is set to make its West End debut at the end of this month.

The new show, reportedly written before the pandemic, follows a 19th-century Hungarian doctor who is driven mad as the medical institutions surrounding him refuse to listen to him about the importance of sanitation in preventing the spread of germs and disease.

As the former artistic director of The Globe Theatre in London, Sir Mark also weighed in on the recent controversies sparked by author Elizabeth Winkler who suggest in her book, Shakespeare Was A Woman and Other Heresies, that poet Philip Sidney’s sister, Mary, had a role in the publication of the iconic plays.

Sir Mark agreed with the concept, saying: “It’s a very, very reasonable, rational question.”