Legend: Alone one morning in the canteen of the National Theatre, Michael Gambon looked up to find Laurence Olivier sitting opposite him. Tongue-tied, and flailing for conversation topics, Gambon noticed a wallet marked with the word "Norge".
"Norge, Sir Laurence," Gambon stammered. "They must have given that to you in Norway, Sir Laurence, when you played Hamlet in Elsinore?" Olivier stared back at the young actor, before gathering up his things to leave. "Elsinore isn't in Norway," he said. "That isn't my wallet.
And I haven't got a f***ing clue what you're talking about."
True or False? "Oh, it's all true. You've got to remember that Olivier was the most famous actor in the world at the time. You can imagine what it was like trying to talk to him. He was like a Greek god . . . surrounded by idiots." (Note: the obscenity in Olivier's last line is usually adjusted to suit the listener.)
Legend: In each new dressing room, Gambon used to place a signed photograph of Robert De Niro by his mirror, bearing the inscription "Dear Mike, Best wishes - I admire your work - Love always, Bob". If asked, Gambon would regale his fellow actors with stories of the pair's work and times together.
True or False?"Yeah, that's true," he says. Well, sort of. The picture was a fake, a still from The King of Comedy bought from a stall, and Gambon wrote the inscription himself. Until this year, on the set of The Good Shepherd, Gambon had never worked with De Niro. "I told him about it," admits Gambon. "And he laughed like a drain."
Legend: When Gambon - a qualified pilot - learned that his friend, the actor Terence Rigby, was afraid of flying, he offered to take him up in a two-seater plane in the hope of curing him. As he began his descent, Michael pretended to have a heart attack and slumped over the controls, his tongue lolling out, while side-spying his friend to see his response. Rigby contemplated his fate and calmly smoked a cigarette. By the time Gambon had stopped the act, cleaned himself up and apologised, Rigby had overcome his fear of flying.
True or False? False. "It didn't cure him."