Everything about Anthony Hopkins totally explained
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins,
CBE (born
December 31,
1937) is an
Academy Award-,
Golden Globe-, double
Emmy-, triple
BAFTA- and
Saturn Award-winning
Welsh film,
stage and
television actor. Considered by many to be one of film's greatest living actors, he's arguably best known for his portrayal of
cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in the
1991 blockbuster
The Silence of the Lambs, its sequel,
Hannibal, and its prequel,
Red Dragon. Other notable film credits include
The Elephant Man,
Bram Stoker's Dracula,
The Remains of the Day,
The Mask of Zorro,
Hearts in Atlantis, Nixon and
Fracture. Hopkins was born and raised in
Wales, and also became a
U.S. citizen on
12 April 2000. He received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003 and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008.
Biography
Early life
Hopkins was born in
Margam,
Port Talbot,
Wales, the son of Muriel Anne (
née Yeates) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a
baker. His mother is a distant relative of the Irish poet
William Butler Yeats.
Despite his success at the National, Hopkins tired of repeating the same roles nightly and yearned to be in movies. In 1968, he got his break in
The Lion in Winter playing
Richard I, along with
Peter O'Toole,
Katharine Hepburn, and future
James Bond star
Timothy Dalton, who played
Philip II of France.
Although Hopkins continued in theatre (most notably in the
Broadway production of
Peter Shaffer's
Equus, directed by
John Dexter) he gradually moved away from it to become more established as a television and film actor. He made his small-screen debut in a 1967
BBC broadcast of
A Flea in Her Ear. He has since gone on to enjoy a long career, winning many plaudits and awards for his performances. Hopkins was made a
Commander of the British Empire (
CBE) in 1987, and a
Knight Bachelor in 1993 In 1996, Hopkins was awarded an honorary fellowship from the
University of Wales, Lampeter.
Hopkins has stated that his role as
Burt Munro, whom he portrayed in his 2005 film
The World's Fastest Indian, was his favourite. He also asserted that Munro was the easiest role that he'd ever played because both men have a similar outlook on life.
In 2006, Hopkins was the recipient of the
Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
In 2008, he received the Bafta Fellowship Award.
Acting style
Hopkins is renowned for his firm preparation for roles. He has confessed in interviews that once he's committed to a project, he'll go over his lines as many times as is needed (sometimes upwards of 200) until the lines sound natural to him, so that he can "do it without thinking". This leads to an almost casual style of delivery that belies the amount of groundwork done beforehand. While it can allow for some careful improvisation, it has also brought him into conflict with the occasional director who departs from the script, or demands what the actor views as an excessive number of takes. Hopkins has also stated that after he's finished with a scene, he simply discards the lines, not remembering them later on. This is unlike other actors who usually remember their lines from a film even years later.
Richard Attenborough, who has directed Hopkins on five occasions, found himself going to great lengths during the filming of
Shadowlands (1993) to accommodate the differing approaches of his two stars (Hopkins and
Debra Winger), who shared many scenes. Whereas Hopkins liked to keep rehearsals to a minimum, preferring the spontaneity of a fresh take, Winger rehearsed continuously. To allow for this, Attenborough stood in for Hopkins during Winger's rehearsals, only bringing him in for the last one before a take. The director praised Hopkins for "this extraordinary ability to make you believe when you hear him that it's the very first time he's ever said that line. It's an incredible gift." At the time he was offered the role, Hopkins was making a return to the London stage, performing in
M. Butterfly. He had come back to Britain after living for a number of years in Hollywood, having all but given up on a career there, saying, "Well that part of my life's over; it's a chapter closed. I suppose I'll just have to settle for being a respectable actor poncing around the West End and doing respectable BBC work for the rest of my life." who has been
sober since 1975. Hopkins is known to be a joker while on set, lightening the mood during production by barking like a dog before filming a scene, according to a
Tonight Show interview broadcast on
9 April 2007.
Hopkins is a prominent member of environmental protection group
Greenpeace and as of early 2008 featured in a television advertisement campaign, voicing concerns about Japan's continuing annual whale slaughter.
He is an admirer of the comedian
Tommy Cooper. On
23 February 2008, as patron of The Tommy Cooper Society, the actor unveiled a commemorative statue in the entertainer's home town of
Caerphilly. For the ceremony, Hopkins donned Cooper's trademark
fez and performed a comic routine.
Other work
Hopkins is a talented
pianist. In
1986, he released a single called "Distant Star". It peaked at #75 in the UK charts. In
2007, he announced he'd retire temporarily from the screen to tour around the world.
In 1996, Hopkins directed his first film,
August, an adaptation of
Chekhov's
Uncle Vanya. His first screenplay, an experimental drama called
Slipstream, which he also directed and scored, premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival in 2007.
Hopkins is a fan of the
BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, and once remarked in an interview how he'd love to appear in the series. Writer
John Sullivan saw the interview, and with Hopkins in mind created the character
Danny Driscoll, a local villain. However, filming of the new series coincided with the filming of
The Silence of the Lambs, making Hopkins unavailable. The role instead went to his friend
Roy Marsden.
Hopkins has played many famous historical and fictional characters including:
- John Quincy Adams (Amistad, 1997)
- Pierre Bezukhov (War and Peace, 1972)
- William Bligh (The Bounty, 1984)
- Charles Dickens (The Great Inimitable Mr Dickens, 1970)
- John Frost (A Bridge Too Far, 1977)
- Bruno Hauptmann (The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, 1976),
- Abraham Van Helsing (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992)
- Adolf Hitler (The Bunker, 1981),
- Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (The Road to Wellville, 1994)
- C. S. Lewis (Shadowlands, 1993),
- David Lloyd George (Young Winston, 1972)
- Burt Munro (The World's Fastest Indian, 2005)
- Richard Nixon (Nixon, 1995)
- St. Paul (Peter and Paul, 1981)
- Othello (Othello, 1981)
- Pablo Picasso (Surviving Picasso, 1996)
- Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1982)
- Yitzak Rabin (Victory at Entebbe, 1976)
- Richard Lionheart (The Lion in Winter, 1968)
- Marcus Crassus (Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of Spartacus, 1992)
- Titus Andronicus (Titus, 1999)
- Frederick Treves (The Elephant Man, 1980)
- Don Diego de la Vega/Zorro (The Mask of Zorro, 1998)
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) (Hannibal, 2001) (Red Dragon, 2002)
- Quasimodo (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1982 film), 1982)
Awards
Besides his win for
The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins has been Oscar-nominated for
The Remains of the Day (1993),
Nixon (1995) and
Amistad (1997).
Hopkins won the
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in 1973 for his performance as
Pierre Bezukhov in the
BBC's production of
War and Peace, and additionally for
The Silence of the Lambs and
Shadowlands. He received nominations in the same category for
Magic and
The Remains of the Day and as Best Supporting Actor for
The Lion in Winter.
He won
Emmy Awards for his roles in
The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case and
The Bunker, and was Emmy-nominated for
The Hunchback of Notre Dame and
Great Expectations. He won the directing and the acting award, both for
Slipstream, at
Switzerland's
Locarno International Film Festival.
Filmography
Further Information
Get more info on 'Anthony Hopkins'.
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