Mark Rylance: how Robert Bly changed my life

Ahead of a new film about Robert Bly, Mark Rylance recalls how the poet helped him to live with loss

I was raised in Milwaukee up to 1978, when I was 18. My father was an English teacher, so I must have come upon the American poet Robert Bly through him. But the first time I remember meeting him was after a performance of Hamlet in 1989.

I felt a sense of excitement, and a certain nervousness. He had this penetrating ability to see what was going on, and he didn’t have any shyness about saying it. Robert was there the first time I went to a men’s gathering, organised under the auspices of wild dance. There were 90 men gathered, and it was remarkable. I think I got a bit relaxed back in a cabin after a session, and I called him Bob. I can’t imagine why. I remember him turning to me and saying, “You’re going to have to call me Robert.”