Celebrity Anthony Hopkins

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Anthony Hopkins

Birthday:

31 December 1937

Birth Name:

Philip Anthony Hopkins

Height:

174 cm

Biography

I'm often asked to do projects. If I don't want to do something, after a while I'll say "No. What part of No don't you understand?"

I think "I'm glad I've made a good film, because now I can make a bad one!"

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what an am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes like so much easier.

[on Marlon Brando] He was fascinating to watch, he could do anything. It was the 'screw you' attitude. That takes tremendous courage or tremendous folly.

I was away for a few weeks in a hotel watching new releases. Some I had to switch off after eight minutes. I couldn't understand what anyone was saying.

I've never considered myself a great actor. I'm a fluke. I work hard and I see through the bastards and to this day I have massive energy; I think it keeps a youthfulness in me. I never slow down because I love to work. I did four films last year. My agent says, 'Would you like to read the phone book next week for them [directors]?' And I say, 'Yeah OK.'

[on why he relocated to the U.S.] Many people talk of London as being the heart of the swinging 60s. It wasn't for me. What I remember is the grey mist hanging over the Waterloo Road on a Wednesday afternoon. It was so depressing I moved to the land of Donald Duck.

[on what he considers his greatest achievement] Everything rather blends into one now. It was very nice to get an Oscar but now it just rusts and tarnishes on the sideboard near the TV. You can't take any of it too seriously. Death comes to us all. Not long ago I was in Arlington cemetery by JFK's grave and I thought how the great years of his presidency wer...

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[on what his idea of a good night is] Staying in and watching Mob Wives on TV. I don't have many friends; I'm very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated and I've never been really close to anyone. Ask nothing, expect nothing. That's my creed. We're all just a bunch of sinners crashing around in the darkness.

[on how he prepares for the characters he plays] I learn the text!

[on Shirley MacLaine] The most obnoxious actress I've ever worked with.

We're living in a pretty strange time. I went into a shop to buy my wife some clothes. They had this big plasma screen on with these women on the catwalk. I thought, 'God Almighty, what have we become?' These girls - anorexic, walking like machines, no soul. You look at fashion magazines and you think, 'What are we living in?' You look at the red carpet, Paris Hilton, and you think, 'Is there anything going on up there?' It's a mass enslavement, it's kind of fascism. It's the androgyny of the human soul. I don't think people think any more. Maybe I'm just old.

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I went to America years ago because I felt I didn't fit in here [UK]. I worked with some good people here, like Judi Dench and all that. But I never fitted into a group of actors here. I was on the outside; I was like a sore thumb. I didn't have any friends who were actors at all - I never did. I've always been on the outside, which is good. But it was difficult being on London in this very strange acting community. All that "theatre, dahling" - I just found it insufferable. It was just boring. So I did the thing I'd wanted to do all my life, which was to make movies. I've never felt a part of this profession, but I enjoy it. Working with Katharine Hepburn on The Lion in Winter (1968), she said to me, "Don't act. Read the lines. Just be." I said, "Okay." She said, "Watch Spencer Tracy. He didn't act. He just spoke the lines." I thought, "Well, that's pretty good advice." I think the actors from that generation were wonderful. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful. People say, "They didn't act. They were always themselves." Well, who else were they going to be? In England we have a tradition where everyone is acting. Too much acting.

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[on Hannibal (2001)] They offered me the part and a very good salary, so I thought, "Why not?" First of all I didn't think I wanted to do it again, but then they said it was going off to Venice or wherever, so I watched The Silence of the Lambs (1991) briefly and thought, "Okay, let's have another go at this." I didn't care, really. If that's what they want, then okay. When Jodie [Foster] dropped out, Ridley [Scott] said to me, "What do you think of certain actors?" I said "I think Julianne Moore is very, very good." I'd worked with her on Surviving Picasso (1996). And she pulled it off beautifully. If the film succeeded or not, I don't mind. You move on.

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[on The Silence of the Lambs (1991)] As soon as I saw that script I knew this was one of those special parts. I don't know why, it's just an instinct. I'd never heard of the book. I'd never heard of Thomas Harris. I read the script and they told me Jonathan Demme was doing it - I'd never heard of him, either. So I watched Married to the Mob (1988) and Something Wild (1986), which I thought was a terrific film. And we had the great cast: Jodie Foster. I knew it was something good. That was the only surefire one where I knew it was going to work. I remember my first meeting with Jodie in New York, for a reading of the whole script. Jodie had just won the Oscar for The Accused (1988) and I was kind of impressed at this wonderful young actor. I was a little intimidated, a little quiet, shy.....I didn't realise she felt the same!

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You know when some of these megaphones of Hollywood show up on these award shows, and just never shut the f**k up? I just want to say 'Accept your award. Say "thank you," and get off!' I'm just not interested in all that bulls**t. There are surgeons and nurses and teachers, people out there who really deserve awards.

[on Richard Attenborough] Richard's a nice guy, very persuasive, a great salesman in the sense that he gets what he wants from you. He can charm a lot of people. He's a good man. I haven't seen him for a long time.

I'm not good at being cooped up with anyone for very long. Maybe that's why I wasn't designed for marriage. I'm not good at any kind of relationship with people, really. I mean, I've had a number of good ones, but I get restless and I take off.

[on playing Hannibal Lecter for the third time in Red Dragon (2002)] I really wanted to play him with much more ferocious energy, and avoid the jokes. I really wanted to show what a true monster he is. He's a killer. He's a dangerous man, not Mr. Cutesy. This isn't a franchise, like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This is a dangerous man, who's better off in...

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[on Laurence Olivier] He was a pretty colorful personality. He had tremendous drive, and ambition, and was a real force. A very nice guy and a titanic talent. His sort of talent has, in the eyes of cynics, become rather unfashionable. There are people who knock Olivier quite often, but not a single one of them could ever touch him in terms of talent. I thoug...

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I've got no problem if people want to spend hours beforehand preparing before they come on-set, as long as they don't keep you waiting. And I've read Stanislavski and did the Method myself, and all that, but now I've simplified it: learn your lines, show up, and get on with it.

We like to look into the dark side of ourselves and I think that causes us great fascination and fear. That's why people like Hannibal Lecter. He was a man caught in a monstrous mind.

I hated the Sixties. It was one long wet Wednesday afternoon in the Waterloo Road. For most of it I was drinking myself into oblivion.

On Peter O'Toole: I had some bizarre nights with Peter when we made The Lion in Winter (1968), but to be honest I don't remember them. He enjoyed his drink - and I did, too. We weren't close friends or anything but we got drunk very quickly and there was always amusement and laughter. I love drunks; they are terrific - except when they throw up on you.

Over the years I worked with a couple of younger actors who reminded me of myself. I like bad boys. I worked with Russell Crowe in Australia before he became a star. Russell is a bad boy. I think he is terrific. Richard Burton was a bad boy, but he shook the rafters of the world. I think it is good to be bad - I was bad all my life. I still am.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry. They're always complaining. I go, "How are you doing?" They say "Ahh..." and they moan and try to take from you. I know a number of people like that, but I can't waste my time on them.

[on acting} I'm not going to turn my back on it until they tell me it's over and we don't want you anymore. So if they say they want me I will go ahead and do it, learn my lines. You know, do what I do. So it's the best time of my life now.

[on paintings he has done] I suppose I could call them primitive because again, as I have no academic training, I could no longer sit in an art class drawing apples or vases or nudes - I can't feel hemmed in.

I may sound to you like a really hard man - I am not ashamed of it at all. I'm not hard, I'm honest.

From the moment I made that decision [in 1975 to give up drinking] a very powerful thought shot into my brain - it's all over, now you can start living. It's extraordinary. That's what I'm aware of today. The powerful spirit in me. I'm not callous. It's expediency. I will not be taken for a fool any more.

I sometimes wake at night and I can hear the sea and I think: what the hell am I doing here? How did I get here?" And I make no excuses. I say 'tough titty.' Also 'TYFP' - 'That's your f****** problem. '

[At age 72]: I'm not getting the parts I was 20 years ago - but I'm still doing okay. The prospect of that blank wall where there's no more work - it doesn't fill me with dread.

There's an epitaph on my mother's grave - I brought her over years ago and she's buried up in the Hollywood Hills - from a poem written in 1896 by Ernest Dowson: 'They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream / Our path emerges for a while, then closes / Within a dream.' Isn't that beautiful?

I don't want to be anything else other than what I am. I can say that with passion. No regrets.

I was told years ago that I suffer from 'terminal reasonableness'. From that point on I thought that was something to work on. Not to become a son of a bitch, but to say no. Now, after all these years, I can say: 'What part of the word 'no' do you not understand?'

When I break with a friend it is sudden. I will give no warning ahead of time, just change my address and telephone number. They may be confused - but they'll survive. Nobody dies.

[He did try therapy, briefly, but didn't like it]: Well, you know you never actually fess up to everything - you try to cover your ground, cover your tracks - you want to sound interesting. Living here [in Los Angeles] - all men must cry. Well, I don't think we're wired that way. I think it's okay to express emotions and grief, but to make a habit of it, thi...

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We live in such a precious, pussyfooting society - everyone takes offence so quickly.

[on British humour]: It's like Jewish humour. I love that.

[on working with Woody Allen on You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010): "I wasn't sure how he would be - I'd heard stories that he was aloof. Woody says 'Okay, you come in through the door - let's rehearse it. Okay, that's good. Sure. Let's shoot it'. So we shoot it. 'Okay, very good. But improvise'."

I became an actor but I still don't feel that I'm a part of this profession. I never have - 50 years I've been doing it.

It's nice to get a knighthood but in the end it's just the same old face in the mirror getting older and older - you have to shave every morning and you look at your face and think: this is it, this is the deal. And there's a wonderful harsh reality about that. Time is going by. I better get on with it. I better live.

[Twenty-three years after asking Burton for an autograph, Hopkins was on Broadway in Equus (1977). Burton was taking over the role from Hopkins, who asked to see him backstage: "He was about to go on stage and he said, 'Why haven't we worked together? You come from Taibach'. That's the only time I met him again.

Once you accept the fact that there's nothing to fear, you drill into the primal oil well. I believe when we do things without fear, we can do anything. As long as you don't worry about the consequences.

[on meeting his third wife, Stella Arroyave, a Colombian-born antiques dealer]: I married a remarkable woman who has changed a lot of my perception about myself and about life. She's very positive, very powerful. Every time I get a negative thought, she says, 'Cancel it'.

I was an only child. My mother married into a family of in-laws. She felt like an outsider; which she was. She was a powerful force in my father's life. He was a baker - and she was ambitious for him. She didn't want him to be subservient to his father. She woke him up.

For many, many years I felt like I didn't belong. I was a duffer at school - everything was incomprehensible to me.

I'd been to the dentist, and I was seven years old, to have a tooth taken out. In those days they yanked it out. I was feeling nauseous and I hallucinated. I was in bed and I remember waking up with a knock at the door - a box was put in my bedroom. And it was full of encyclopedias, which my father had got me. I remember looking through those books and findi...

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How do you play Hannibal Lecter? Well just don't move. Scare people by being still.

The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are God.

It's fun to get the Oscar, it was fun to get a knighthood. But you know, you wake up in the morning, the reality's still there. You're still mortal.

My own father was a tough man. He was a pretty red hot guy but he was also cold. He was also slightly disappointed in me because I was not a good kid as a school boy, you know. But I learned from it, I liked that coldness, because it was harsh. And he taught me to be tough. So I know how to be tough. I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's p...

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[on David Lynch] I wrote him a letter not so long ago because I'd seen The Elephant Man (1980) again. I wrote him a letter to apologise for my bad behaviour on that film. I was terribly behaved and very rebellious. He wanted to do too many takes and I couldn't do it. And he was a little remote and I could never understand what he was talking about which made...

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[on Oliver Stone] Oh, Oliver's crazy, but I like him. He's very rude to people. He insults people - he insults me - but you just have to give it back. He says to me, "Oh, you're getting old." So you shoot back with, "Yeah, so are you. You're getting bald, too. You've aged, you're getting balder. Actually, you look older than me, Oliver. It's no good dying your hair like that." But he's good. He's a very talented man. He can be a bit exhausting. I did about 18 hours on Alexander (2004). I never saw it. I understand it wasn't very good. I did 18 hours one night out in Borehamwood and thought, "No, that's it." Had a long rest after that.

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I've done some good films. The Remains of the Day (1993) was alright. The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Nixon (1995) I enjoyed. One of my favourites was working with Roger Donaldson on The World's Fastest Indian (2005). That was fun and seems to be quite popular. It is wonderful to have reached that point where I can do what grabs my attention, when I want to. I'm glad those days are gone where I was yearning for work. People think I've worked a lot, but I haven't. I've had a lot of time off. I've turned down a lot. When you're younger you want to get every part to stop other people getting it. Nowadays, I don't care - let them do it. I don't go through that terrible thing of thinking, "If I don't do it, then who's going to get to do it?" I just mosey my way through and see what happens.

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I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.

Heroes, like Bogart (Humphrey Bogart). They deserve high definition.

[on former US President Bill Clinton] It seems to me that the country rather misses him. He has impressed me. He asked me if I wanted to accompany him on a trip to Brazil, and so off I went. I'd met the President before in Washington, a very nice guy. So we were at this dinner, talking after his gig, he gave this incredible speech and he said, "Would you lik...

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Acting is still enjoyable, but there are no more challenges any more for me. No, none at all. I'm much more interested in painting and composing music these days. I've become what I always wanted to be, a jobbing actor. I'm just detached, I do my thing. I work hard at it, but I don't invest my life in it. As long as they pay me on time and I get a good scrip...

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Being a smoker is like being trapped in a complicated maze. It's as if Allen Carr has a plan of the maze. Instantly I was freed from my addiction.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

One of the people I got to know years ago, which was a great privilege, was Laurence Olivier. He was like a laser - that was his power. And the only actor I've met since who had that same quality of laser-like determination is Russell Crowe. The first day I started working with him, I thought, "That guy's got it." The best way to describe Russell is, he's like a shark circling round. He was argumentative. He argued with the director all the time. I don't know Russell that well, but I admire him, and you know, whatever he's got to do really. I really like him because he's ballsy, he's got guts, he's macho and all the rest of it. He's going through his bad boy period, but he's basically a nice guy.

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[on his most famous character, Dr. Hannibal Lecter] I think he might be a very interesting person to have lunch with, provided that YOU weren't the lunch.

[on his days as an alcoholic, when he was drinking Mexican Spirit tequila] I was really sort of on a prolonged acid trip. I saw things and had peculiar quasi-religious experiences. I thought I was John The Baptist, and I would talk to the sea at Malibu and the sea would talk back to me. It was weird.

[on becoming a U.S. citizen in 2000] America has been very generous to me, magnanimous really. I thought it would be good to give something back. It was a decision of the heart.

[December 1998] To hell with this stupid show business, this ridiculous showbiz, this futile waste of life. I look back and see a desert wasteland. All those years spent in a fake environment. Everything was a fake.

The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

[Interviewed on Inside the Actors Studio (1994)] I once asked a Jesuit priest what was the best short prayer he knew. He said, "Fuck it,' as in, "Fuck it; it's in God's hands."

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor.

[on Gary Oldman] He is just like I was at his age.