U.K. actor says he met boy the Dalai Lama said was the reincarnation of his late brother

Somewhere in Nova Scotia, there is a 20-year-old that the Dalai Lama told famed British actor Brian Blessed was the reincarnation of his dead brother.

What’s more, Blessed claimed to have met the boy in a recent interview with the U.K.’s Event magazine. In the early 1990s, as Blessed’s brother Alan was suffering from leukemia, the actor met the Dalai Lama while filming the TV movie Galahad of Everest.

“When he dies, you will see him again as a little boy in Halifax, Nova Scotia,” the Tibetan spiritual leader told Blessed about his sick brother, adding “he loves fishing. He will become a fisherman.”

Reincarnation is central to Buddhist beliefs. Followers of the Dalai Lama, in fact, believe him to be the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, who died in 1933.

Born to a farming family in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was found after an intensive search by high priests who determined him to be the reincarnation.

Although Blessed is not a Buddhist, he has repeatedly said he does not believe in death. His brother Alan died in 1996, and 10 years later Blessed said he met a Halifax boy who matched his brother’s appearance. Blessed was in Nova Scotia to film The Conclave, a Canadian-German drama about the 1458 selection of a new pope.

Speaking to Event, Blessed provided few details of the meeting, only that he saw the boy on a “street in Halifax” after a particularly heavy snowfall.

“There he was, with a Canadian accent, looking exactly as he had looked when he was a little boy in Yorkshire,” said Blessed, adding “the boy’s father was a fisherman. I was very excited.”

To avoid unnerving the boy or his family, however, Blessed said he did not indicate that he thought the Haligonian was his brother. The unnamed boy would be about 20 now. A renowned Shakespearean stage actor in the U.K., Blessed is often credited as one of the loudest men in Great Britain — and is particularly well-known for the catchphrase “Gordon’s alive,” which he delivered in 1980’s Flash Gordon.

North American audiences probably know him best for roles in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Disney’s Tarzan.

— GETTY IMAGES FILES Actor Brian Blessed claims to have met the person the Dalai Lama told him was the reincarnation of his dead brother. ‘There he was ... looking exactly as he had looked when he was a little boy in Yorkshire,’ said Blessed.