Richard Burton<\/a> and Richard Harris. Did he fit that description?<\/p>\n\u201cYes, yes, I did. I would not be trusted, and I would have fights and quarrel with, especially, directors. Looking back, it\u2019s all paranoia. They were trying to do their job; I was trying to do mine, but I couldn\u2019t take any \u2026 it wasn\u2019t criticism, I couldn\u2019t take any authoritative bullying. So I\u2019d lash out.\u201d He would often get into physical fights in pubs, too.<\/p>\n
The week before Hopkins\u2019 first marriage, to fellow actor Petronella Barker in 1966, he impulsively quit the National because of one such director, declaring he was giving up acting. He recalls his colleagues getting sloshed at the wedding reception then heading off to perform in the afternoon matinee. He used to do the same. \u201cOh yeah, it was terrible. You used to be on stage and not know where you were or why you were there, adding 10 minutes to the play.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was just the done thing, he says. \u201cYeah, we are rebels. We can fight. Who cares about the establishment? When you\u2019re growing up, it\u2019s healthy to want to punch out and be rebellious and survive. And it was a bit of fun, I thought. But I remember thinking one day: \u2018Yeah, and it\u2019s going to kill you as well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
As Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Photograph: Orion Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n
It certainly took many of his contemporaries. By the mid-70s, even as his career was going places, Hopkins\u2019 drinking and heavy smoking were taking a toll on his health \u2013 and his relationships. In 1969, after two years of marriage marked by rows, depression and a lot of whisky, he walked out on Barker and their one-year-old daughter, Abigail. He describes it as \u201cthe saddest fact of my life, and my greatest regret, and yet I feel absolutely sure that it would have been much worse for everyone if I\u2019d stayed\u201d. He and Barker divorced in 1972.<\/p>\n
The real wake-up call came in December 1975, in LA. He woke up one morning to find his car missing, and called his agent to tell him. \u201cNobody stole it,\u201d his agent replied. \u201cWe found you on the road.\u201d Hopkins had driven all night from Arizona to Beverly Hills, about 500 miles, blackout drunk. \u201cI was insane, I was nuts, I couldn\u2019t remember half the journey,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s a deadly way to live, because I didn\u2019t care about myself. I could have taken out an entire family \u2026 I knew I needed help, I knew it was over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The way he narrates it, a literal voice in his head asked him if he wanted to live or die. He replied: \u201c\u2018I want to live,\u2019 and the voice said, \u2018It\u2019s all over now. You can start living.\u2019\u201d He went straight to Alcoholics Anonymous. Afterwards, \u201cI got out on the street, 11am, 29 December 1975, and everything looked different. Everything seemed sunnier, everything seemed more \u2026 benign. No threat in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t go as far as to claim it was God that spoke to him, but it was \u201ca moment of clarity\u201d, he says, \u201cfrom deep inside here [he points to his head] or here [he points to his heart].\u201d He has never craved a drink since. \u201cWe all have that power within us, and we choose our lives and navigate through that kind of \u2026 inspiration, I suppose it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
By this stage Hopkins was living and working more and more in the US, and in cinema. \u201cI just wanted some sunshine, and I didn\u2019t want to be standing around in wrinkled tights holding a spear for the rest of my life,\u201d he jokes. It was his hero O\u2019Toole who had first coaxed him on to a movie set, in 1968. He knocked on Hopkins\u2019 dressing room door at the National one day and said, \u201cI want you to do a test for me,\u201d Hopkins says. \u201cHe\u2019d had a few jars, and we went to the pub afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hopkins in The Lion in Winter. <\/p>\n
Laurence Olivier gave me this huge break in my life. He seemed to admire my physical strength, and I had this sense of Welsh danger, you know \u2026 quick-tempered<\/p>\n
Hopkins in The Father, for which he won his second Oscar. <\/p>\n
I think: \u2018How did I get this far?\u2019 I have no idea how my particular life has moved from when I was in Port Talbot, a little boy lost, to here. It\u2019s beyond my comprehension. And I mean this deeply<\/p>\n
The screen test was for the historical drama The Lion in Winter, starring O\u2019Toole and Katharine Hepburn. As Richard the Lionheart, Hopkins looked and felt at home on screen. \u201cI think that anger in me, or whatever it was, it gave me a strong presence. And I was cunning. I could listen to advice. Hepburn said to me: \u2018You don\u2019t actually need to act. You\u2019ve got a good head, you\u2019ve got good shoulders. Just speak the lines.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By the 1980s he was building a solid, steady career as a character actor \u2013 all of which went out of the window, or at least up to a higher floor, with The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Director Jonathan Demme had seen Hopkins in David Lynch\u2019s The Elephant Man, playing a kindly Victorian doctor, and somehow thought he\u2019d be perfect for the part of Hannibal Lecter \u2013 the psychiatrist turned cannibal serial killer. When his agent told him the title, Hopkins asked: \u201cIs it a children\u2019s film?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hearing him talk about his most famous role, it\u2019s clear how much Hopkins brought to the part himself. He instinctively knew how to play Lecter, he says \u2013 not as a monster but as the opposite: serene, precise, unblinking, \u201cat once remote and awake\u201d. Elements that went into the character, he\u2019s said, included Hal from Kubrick\u2019s 2001, Bela Lugosi\u2019s Dracula, Katharine Hepburn and his old drama teacher at Rada, plus a soup\u00e7on of camp. The result was a character like no other; a new horror archetype, even.<\/p>\n
Hopkins, aged 5, in 1943. Photograph: Courtesy Anthony Hopkins<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to Pittsburgh for the initial wardrobe-fitting,\u201d he says. \u201cThey wanted me to be in an orange jumpsuit. I said: \u2018No, I want a slimline green suit. Lecter can employ anyone to make it, because he\u2019s so smart, and he\u2019ll kill if you don\u2019t obey his orders.\u2019\u201d He thought hard about his first scene with Jodie Foster, when she visits his prison cell to ask for his help. \u201cI remember Jonathan Demme saying: \u2018How do you want to be discovered when Jodie first sees you? Would you be lying down or reading a book?\u2019 I said: \u2018No, standing.\u2019 He said: \u2018OK. Why?\u2019 I said: \u2018I can smell her coming down the corridor.\u2019 He said: \u2018You\u2019re weird.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Foster was also weirded out by him. She later admitted she avoided him as much as she could on set. On the last day of the shoot they had lunch together. Foster told him she was scared of him. \u201cI was scared of you, too!\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n
Such was the cultural reach of The Silence of the Lambs that on Oscars night 1992, host Billy Crystal was wheeled on to the stage strapped to a gurney in a Lecter mask. Hopkins still didn\u2019t believe he\u2019d win best actor (the movie won five Oscars that night, including his award). In his mid-50s, he was suddenly in the A-league and in demand, with some of his best (and certainly his most lucrative) work ahead of him. He seems to have thrown himself into it \u2013 big-budget epics, broad action thrillers, horror sequels (he played Lecter twice more) and period dramas, plus the occasional paycheck role (Transformers: The Last Knight, say).<\/p>\n
He has played a whole gallery of great men: Richard Nixon, Alfred Hitchcock, Pope Benedict, Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens, Pablo Picasso, King Herod, King Lear, Methuselah, not to mention the Norse god Odin in Marvel\u2019s Thor movies.<\/p>\n
But he is perhaps at his best playing the less-great ones. His outstanding turn as a repressed butler in Merchant Ivory\u2019s The Remains of the Day, for example, who is tragically incapable of connecting with those around him, especially the housekeeper played by Emma Thompson. It\u2019s another meticulously controlled character in the Lecter vein, which surely says something about the British class system. \u201cJames Ivory is one of those special directors,\u201d says Hopkins, \u201cbecause he lets you figure it out. He doesn\u2019t direct but he\u2019s got an artist\u2019s eye. He knows about design. Everything was so perfectly arranged, you didn\u2019t have to act.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was as another relative nobody that Hopkins won his second Oscar in 2021, as an old man untethered from reality by dementia, in Florian Zeller\u2019s The Father. The awards ceremony was one of the most awkward in history. As well as being delayed and curtailed by the Covid pandemic, the event was overshadowed by the recent death of Chadwick Boseman, who it was assumed was such a shoo-in for best actor that this was made the final award of the night rather than the traditional best picture. To everyone\u2019s surprise, the Oscar went to Hopkins instead.<\/p>\n
As Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone\u2019s Nixon. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n
Hopkins wasn\u2019t there to pick up the award. He wasn\u2019t even watching. \u201cI was asleep!\u201d he says. \u201cI certainly did not expect it. God, where was I? I was in England, yes.\u201d He was about to start shooting a film the next morning. \u201cAnd so I didn\u2019t show up and went to bed. Four o\u2019clock in the morning, my agent\u2019s voice: \u2018You got the Oscar!\u2019 I said: \u2018What?\u2019 It was a wonderful surprise, but the film itself was one of the easiest. I thought: \u2018Well, I don\u2019t have to act old. I am old.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite having been a Hollywood fixture for so long, and a latter-day Instagram star, Hopkins is not at all interested in celebrity. \u201cI\u2019ve never been one for the glamour side, the red carpet. I go along if I have to do one of those premiere things, and they\u2019re pleasant and friendly and they\u2019re OK, but I\u2019d rather be at home playing the piano or reading a book,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a necessary part of my professional life, to do publicity, but I don\u2019t crave it.\u201d His social circle is small: a few close friends, and his third wife and her family. He met Stella Arroyave in 2000, when she was running an antiques shop in Pacific Palisades, and they married in 2003. \u201cShe broke me wide open, helped me overcome the old feelings of regret and anxiety in a way that\u2019s set me free,\u201d he writes of her in his book.<\/p>\n
Even talking now, about his life, there\u2019s the distinct impression that this is not Hopkins\u2019 comfort zone. He is cordial but guarded, happier to offer an anecdote than an opinion. There are areas of his life he\u2019s not keen to discuss: his daughter, for example, from whom he remains estranged. (He doesn\u2019t dwell on it. \u201cIf you want to waste your life being in resentment \u2026 fine, go ahead. That\u2019s not in my camp,\u201d he said in a recent interview.) There\u2019s also a line in his memoir about his second marriage, of nearly 30 years, to Jennifer Lynton, where he says: \u201cIt was only years later that she knew about my infidelities,\u201d but he does not expand any further on that. He first met Lynton in 1969 when she was a production assistant \u2013 she picked him up from Heathrow after he\u2019d missed a flight because of his drinking \u2013 and they married in 1973. She saw him through the worst of his alcoholism, he says, but she always preferred London to LA, and they drifted apart. \u201cShe deserved better than me,\u201d he writes, regretfully.<\/p>\n
He is also reluctant to comment directly on politics or current affairs (he became an American citizen in 2000), although he sometimes does so obliquely, through the prism of one of his roles. When I ask about his repeated mentions in the book to having \u201ca monster inside me\u201d, for example, he references Nicholas Winton, the real-life hero he portrayed in 2023\u2019s One Life, who rescued more than 600 children from the Nazis in eastern Europe and brought them to Britain.<\/p>\n
With Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day. Photograph: AJ Pics\/Alamy<\/p>\n
\u201cHis only belief was, we must learn to be flexible, learn to be reasonable, learn to listen to the other guy, even if you don\u2019t agree,\u201d says Hopkins. \u201cAnd stop being certain. Once you have certainty, no one can get into you. That\u2019s deadly. That causes horrific problems in the world, once you think you\u2019ve got the answer and nobody else. We\u2019re living in it today: you\u2019re wrong, I\u2019m right; if you differ from me, I\u2019ll have you killed or I\u2019ll have you cancelled or unfollowed. I mean, what are we talking about? It\u2019s rubbish. Changing the language to suit our own preconceived bigotry because somebody doesn\u2019t agree with us, politically or philosophically or racially. What are we doing? We\u2019re human beings, fragile animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is nothing studied or strategic about Hopkins\u2019 reticence, though. That\u2019s just the way he is, and doubtless always has been. When he mentions the photograph of himself, aged four, on the back cover of his book, he says: \u201cI still feel like that young kid.\u201d At that age he was \u201ctoo young to comprehend any meaning in existence\u201d, he writes. So, as he approaches his 10th decade, has Hopkins come to any conclusions?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I know nothing,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cI don\u2019t think we know anything. I look around and I think: \u2018How did I get this far?\u2019 I have no idea how my particular life has moved from when I was in Port Talbot, a little boy lost, to here. It\u2019s beyond my comprehension. And I mean this deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n
He does, however, invoke that desire he had within him from a young age: to succeed, to show his parents and the world that he wasn\u2019t \u201ca complete dummy\u201d. \u201cI try to tell this to younger people, if they want to listen to me: really begin to believe that you have a power inside. You can do almost anything. Just tap into that trigger moment that will push you forward. Never give in. If you fall down, get up again. Don\u2019t feel sorry for stuff, never be a victim and just get on with it. It\u2019s a tough philosophy, but I think some of my younger friends have taken that advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does he still have that desire to show the world?<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I go on working,\u201d he says. \u201cThey offer me work, and I do it and I enjoy it. I go over my script over and over and over, so that by the time I get there, I know it all, and that inspires confidence in people around you. You better show up and know your stuff, because otherwise you get left behind. I suppose the message is, live life as if this is your last day.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly what he\u2019s doing. \u201cNow, at my age, I\u2019ve accepted everything. I have no guarantees. I wake up in the morning, I say: \u2018I\u2019m still here. I\u2019m strong, I\u2019m fit, and a lot of my friends have gone.\u2019 I look at my life and I think: Oh God, I\u2019m so \u2013 and I mean this, really \u2013 I\u2019m so lucky. I was gonna use the expletive, but I won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the Guardian, I say, you\u2019re allowed to swear.<\/p>\n
\u201cFucking lucky!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
We Did OK, Kid by Anthony Hopkins is out now. To support the Guardian, buy a copy from guardianbookshop.com<\/a> for \u00a321.25. Delivery charge may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Hopkins in 2017. Photograph: Sebastien Micke\/Paris Match\/Contour\/Getty Images \u2018What\u2019s the weather like over there?\u201d asks Anthony Hopkins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-269229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}