Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE, is a Welsh actor of film, stage, and television. After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was then spotted by Laurence Olivier who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre. In 1968, he got his break in film in The Lion in Winter, playing King Richard the Lionheart...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 December 1937
CityMargam, Wales
Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.
I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.
The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god.
I've been very lucky. I've had my problems in the past, I've had my troubles, but you move on. I had a great life and I am really thankful for it.
I wanted to be a musician but I didn't have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor.
There are people who are convinced supernatural forces are at work, but I've no idea. I suspect 'possession' might be a psychological thing, like schizophrenia. We all think we know things, but we don't know a damn thing. Whether God exists, why we're here... Nobody really knows any of it.
I'd like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don't. I look in the mirror, and I see me.
I don't want to be anything else other than what I am. I can say that with passion. No regrets...
I don't know why they gave me a knighthood - though it's very nice of them - but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don't.
Acting is constricted because you have the lines. But I improvise with it and what I learn on the set. I improvise rhythms and just changes.
You have to be pretty tough to be an actor, and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can't waffle through this business.
Most of my last 30 years have been like that. Results and manifestations of things I'd dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man. I realized it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, "This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I'd pictured it." My whole life has been like that and I'm fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go.
Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.
Guilt is the thief of life.