6 March 2013 Last updated at 23:03 ET By Ian Youngs Arts reporter, BBC News
Veteran actor Edward Petherbridge was two days into rehearsals for King Lear when he suffered two strokes. He is now back on stage and has turned the experience into a new show about having the strokes and missing the chance to play Lear.
After more than five decades as one of Britain's most dependable and distinguished thespians, Edward Petherbridge had never had the chance to tackle an actor's biggest challenge - a lead role in one of Shakespeare's great tragedies.
So when an email came asking him to play King Lear in New Zealand in 2007, he had no hesitation. "I'd have gone to Timbuktu," he says.
Petherbridge earned his spurs as part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company in the 1960s and as a mainstay of the Royal Shakespeare Company from the '70s.
He formed The Actors' Company with Sir Ian McKellen, played Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby in the West End and on Broadway, has won an Olivier Award and was the original Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
"Olivier himself handed me the script," the 76-year-old recalls.
"He said, 'Marvellous part. Marvellous play.' That's all he said. As I opened it on the bus home, I realised that my number had come up in a rather big way."
On television, Petherbridge is best known for playing the snooty sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey in the Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries.
"I played him on television in '86 with Harriet Walter, who I must now remember to call Dame," he says before adding, like a true Shakespearean delivering an aside: "I think my knighthood was lost in the post."
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Actor puts stroke story on stage