Me and my health - Terence Stamp

Fallen arches were Terence Stamp's turning point. Here, he tells GRAHAM BRIDGSTOCK how after failing his National Service medical, he spent his windfall two years at drama school - and became an award-winning actor. In 1994, life-long allergies prompted him to create The Stamp Collection, a range of wheat and dairy-free foods.

When I was at my Army medical at 18, the doctor said: 'Any trouble with the feet?' I am so glad he reminded me, otherwise I might not be the actor I am today.

I recalled how, as a boy, one shoe was always tight and the other loose because my right foot was a little bit bigger than my left.

When I was 13, I grew something like three inches in a fortnight, and soon afterwards I developed terrible pains in my feet. In fact, it took me ages to get out of bed in the morning because my feet hurt so much.

At the physiotherapy unit at St Andrews Hospital in Poplar, East London, they explained: 'The arches of your feet are completely out of kilter.'

Obviously the Army didn't want some wimp who wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning, never mind march or do drill.

Now both my feet are fine, but I guess my right foot would be a size 11, the left, ideally, a 101/2. Fortunately I can afford tailor-made shoes.

For most of my 62 years I have managed to avoid surgery. All I am short of are my tonsils and appendix.

Surgery was supposed to be the cure when I developed crippling duodenal ulcers at the age of 27. But I put myself on an exclusion diet - eating only brown rice for a month, then introducing one food at a time - to find out which was the bad boy. The answer: wheat and dairy products.

These days, I enjoy wonderful health. At one point my girlfriend felt certain I was diabetic because I had this really sweet breath. She was convinced I needed insulin.

Yet, inevitably, my body is ageing. I still do my stretching - Yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates - but I can't run or jump like I used to.

I used to go to New York for a weekend and think nothing of it, but I would need to arrive a fortnight early these days.

At the moment, I'm 6ft and 11st 12lb. I weighed 8lb when I was born, the first of five children, and I arrived with a full head of hair - though it is being re-routed from the top of my head to my chest now.

My first home - in the East End of London - had no bathroom. A galvanised bath on the wall in the yard would come in on a Friday night. The first one in would get second-degree burns .. . and the last one frostbite.

Both my parents died at 69. My father, a stoker on a Thames tug-boat, died from cirrhosis of the liver, my mother after a stroke.

However, I am aiming for 112. And, touch wood, I have had only one nasty accident filming, when I was driving a horse-drawn buggy in Santa Fe in the 1988 western Young Guns.

There was a take with a camera on a huge arm. 'Gallop the horse towards the camera and it will rise and you will go under it,' they said.

But it didn't rise. The horse veered to the right and my left leg was badly injured and came up like a balloon.

Luckily, I had just one more day's filming and pulled it off with the aid of a walking stick.

Writing three volumes of my memoirs in longhand in 1997, gave me a frozen shoulder. One morning I was running for a train at Charing Cross Tube and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and people were helping me up like an old codger.

The train door had hit my frozen left shoulder and I was in such pain I had simply passed out. After that, I couldn't even dress myself.

A wonderful script had just arrived, so a chum recommended a shoulder expert in Arlington, Virginia. He fixed it with a 20-minute procedure. The film, The Prince Of Shadows, went on to win the Silver Bear award in Berlin.

I can't speak French so a girlfriend did all the talking when I was in Paris back in 1960, and even ordered me a hamburger.

When I'd finished eating she told me it was horsemeat. Suffice to say, I very seldom eat meat now.

In fact, I'm a cheap date. Take red wine. One glass and I'm merry, talkative, headachey and hungover all in the space of half an hour.

It's 25 years since I've eaten sugar. Even if I have it inadvertently, I get spots on my face and my back. And as an actor, I can't afford to do that.