Anthony Hopkins

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Anthony Hopkins once delivered a seven-page courtroom speech in a single take on the set of Steven Spielberg's Amistad. The crew was astonished. Spielberg was so overawed that he could not bring himself to call the actor Tony, and he addressed him as Sir Anthony for the whole shoot.

  The man who commanded that kind of deference grew up convinced he was stupid. He is a Welsh actor, born in 1937, and he became one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific performers on stage, film and television.

  How did a baker's son from Port Talbot, who struggled at school, end up working beside Laurence Olivier? Why did he once believe his Hollywood career was over for good? What does a man do to learn his lines, and what makes his quietest performances the most frightening? And what does he care about when the cameras are off?

  61517

• 2. From Port Talbot to the Stage

  ›

  Philip Anthony Hopkins was born on the 31st of December 1937 in the Margam district of Port Talbot, Wales. His mother was Annie Muriel, born Yeates, and his father, Richard Arthur Hopkins, was a baker. School went badly. The boy preferred painting, drawing and the piano to his lessons. In 1949 his parents sent him to Jones' West Monmouth Boys' School in Pontypool, hoping it would instil discipline. He lasted five terms and then moved to Cowbridge Grammar School in the Vale of Glamorgan. In a 2002 interview he said, "I was a poor learner, which left me open to ridicule and gave me an inferiority complex. I grew up absolutely convinced I was stupid."

  At the age of fifteen, Hopkins met a fellow Welshman, the actor Richard Burton, who inspired him. Years later he pushed back on the idea that they had been close friends. "For the record," he said, "I didn't really know him at all." Hopkins enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff and graduated in 1957. National service followed, in the Royal Artillery from 1958 to 1960. He then moved to London and studied at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1963.

  His first professional stage appearance came in 1960 at the Palace Theatre in Swansea, in Swansea Little Theatre's production of Have a Cigarette. After several years in repertory, he was spotted in 1965 by Laurence Olivier. Olivier invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in London, and Hopkins became his understudy. In 1967 Olivier was struck down with appendicitis during August Strindberg's The Dance of Death, and Hopkins stepped in. Olivier wrote in his memoir, Confessions of an Actor: "A new young actor in the company of exceptional promise named Anthony Hopkins was understudying me and walked away with the part of Edgar like a cat with a mouse between its teeth."

  Until that night, Hopkins had always been nervous before going on stage. Olivier's advice changed that. Nerves, the older actor told him, are vanity, a worry about what people think of you. The cure was to stop caring and jump off the edge. Hopkins called it great advice.

  In October 1974 Hopkins played the psychologist Dysart in the original Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, opposite Peter Firth. The role won him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for the 1974-75 season. When Burton prepared to take over the part in 1975, the two men met again. Hopkins called Burton a phenomenal actor and, with Peter O'Toole, one of the larger-than-life characters of their generation.

  Hopkins has stayed sober since just after Christmas 1975. He says he made a leap when he asked for help, after a woman suggested he trust in God and he answered, "well, why not?" He did not pray in any formal way. He thinks asking for help was itself a form of prayer. In 2025 he marked fifty years of sobriety and urged people with addiction to "choose life."

  In 1985 Hopkins played Lambert Le Roux in Pravda, a satire by David Hare and Howard Brenton about the British newspaper industry in the Thatcher era. It won him a Laurence Olivier Award. Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Hopkins creates a memorable image of a perversely brilliant modern-day barbarian." In 1986 Hopkins played King Lear, his favourite Shakespeare play, in a David Hare production at the National Theatre. The next year he was Mark Antony opposite Judi Dench in Antony and Cleopatra.

  His final stage appearance was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989, and he remembers it as a torment. One matinee drew not a titter. When the lights came up, the cast realised that the entire audience was Japanese. Hopkins recalled that someone would pop a head round his dressing room door and offer coffee or tea, and he would think, "An open razor, please." Yet that same West End run was where an offer found him that would change everything.

  611152432

• 3. Faces on Screen

  ›

  In 1968 Hopkins got his break on screen as Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter, a performance that earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. A year earlier he had made his television debut in a BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. His first starring film role was Changes, a 1964 short directed by Drewe Henley. Television then made his name. He played Charles Dickens in a 1970 BBC film. In 1972 he played Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC's War and Peace and won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.

  That same year he played the politician David Lloyd George in Young Winston, the first of five collaborations with the director Richard Attenborough. Another came in 1977 with the war film A Bridge Too Far, in which Hopkins played the British Army officer John Frost. In 1978 came Magic, a horror story about a demonic ventriloquist's puppet. The critic Gene Siskel counted it among the best films of its year.

  In 1980 David Lynch's The Elephant Man cast Hopkins as the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves, who cares for the severely deformed Joseph Merrick in 19th-century London. John Hurt played Merrick. The film earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Hopkins also made A Change of Seasons that year, opposite Shirley MacLaine. It was a box office and critical failure. The two famously did not get along, and Hopkins later called her "the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with."

  In 1981 Hopkins played Adolf Hitler in The Bunker, a CBS television film about the dictator's final weeks in his Berlin bunker. John O'Connor of The New York Times wrote: "His Hitler is mad, often contemptible, but always understandable." O'Connor also worried that the monster became a little too understandable. Hopkins won a Primetime Emmy Award for the performance.

  In 1984 he played Captain William Bligh opposite Mel Gibson in The Bounty, a retelling of the mutiny that aimed to be more accurate than earlier versions. He played the Soviet spy Guy Burgess in the 1986 BBC film Blunt: the Fourth Man, opposite Ian Richardson. In 1989 he played Abel Magwitch in a miniseries of Great Expectations, broadcast on ITV in Britain and The Disney Channel in the United States. Jean Simmons and John Rhys-Davies appeared with him, and the role brought his fourth Emmy nomination.

  1821232628

• 4. The Cannibal and the Career

  ›

  Director Jonathan Demme wanted a British actor to play Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster, who played the investigator Clarice Starling, explained why: "Lecter is a manipulator and has a way of using language to keep people at bay. You wanted to see that Shakespearean monster." Hopkins had by then come back to Britain after years in Hollywood. He had all but given up on a career there. His own words were: "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."

  The film reversed that forecast. Hopkins won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1991, and Foster won Best Actress. The film also took Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It brought Hopkins his first BAFTA for Best Actor. The American Film Institute later ranked Lecter the number-one film villain.

  Hopkins has said he has known what frightens people since he was a boy in Port Talbot. In a 2016 interview with the Radio Times, he recalled telling the girls on his street the story of Dracula, making the sucking noise "th-th-th" that he later reproduced in The Silence of the Lambs. They ran away screaming. At the first read-through, his opening line to Foster was: "Good morning. You're one of Jack Crawford's aren't you?" Everyone froze. Then one of the producers said, "Holy crap, don't change a thing."

  Hopkins returned to the role in Ridley Scott's Hannibal in 2001. Scott and Julianne Moore replaced Demme and Foster, who had declined to take part. Hopkins agreed once he approved the script. The novel has Lecter disguising himself with bandages as a plastic surgery patient, but Scott and Hopkins chose to leave the face alone. Hopkins saw the hat-wearing Lecter as announcing "catch me if you can," and he thought of him as an elegant man, a Renaissance man. In Florence, Lecter appears as the classical lecturer. For the American scenes, Hopkins built up muscle and cropped his hair short, wanting Lecter to look like a mercenary who could snap someone in two. The film took $351 million worldwide but got mixed reviews.

  Red Dragon followed in 2002, with Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It drew generally favourable reviews and was a box office hit. Hopkins said it would be his last turn as Lecter, and he stayed out of Hannibal Rising in 2007. Thomas Harris, the author of the novels, was reportedly pleased with how Hopkins played his creation. In 1998 Hopkins was Britain's highest-paid performer, and he agreed to return as Lecter for a fee of £15 million.

  3334411517

• 5. Craft and Stillness

  ›

  Hopkins will go over his lines as many as 200 times, by his own account, until they sound natural and he can "do it without thinking." The result is an almost casual delivery that hides the groundwork behind it. The method can allow careful improvisation. It has also set him against the occasional director who strays from the script or asks for what he considers too many takes. Once a scene is finished, he simply discards the lines and does not remember them later.

  Richard Attenborough, who directed him five times, called Hopkins "the greatest actor of his generation." On Shadowlands in 1993, Hopkins and his co-star Debra Winger worked in opposite ways. Hopkins preferred a fresh take and minimal rehearsal, while Winger rehearsed continuously. So Attenborough stood in for Hopkins during Winger's rehearsals and brought him in only for the last one before a take. The director praised "this extraordinary ability to make you believe when you hear him that it is the very first time he has ever said that line. It's an incredible gift."

  To keep his memory supple, Hopkins learns things by heart, such as poetry and Shakespeare. He is also a well-known mimic who can bend his Welsh accent into whatever a character needs. When Spartacus was restored, a scene featuring Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis needed new sound, because its soundtrack had been lost. Joan Plowright, Olivier's widow, recommended Hopkins to voice her late husband's part, thanks to his talent for mimicry. On the 1998 relaunch of the talk show Parkinson, he impersonated the comedian Tommy Cooper.

  The actor Morgan Freeman has pointed to Hopkins as a master of stillness. Freeman cited Hopkins's butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day as one of the great lessons of his own career. "It's all about eloquent stillness," he said, and he named Hopkins as one of the few actors who truly have it.

  Hopkins has compared his approach to thrillers to acting "like a submarine." It is hard for an actor to resist showing a little, he said, but the less one shows, the better. Miranda Sawyer of The Guardian made the same observation about his villains: "When he portrays deliberately scary people, he plays them quietly, emphasising their sinister control."

  15171003812

• 6. The Butler and the Bear

  ›

  In 1992 Hopkins played the cold businessman Henry Wilcox in Merchant-Ivory's Howards End, based on E. M. Forster's novel, with Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter. The critic Leonard Maltin called the film "extraordinarily good on every level." That year Hopkins also played Professor Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and Charlie Chaplin's biographer in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin.

  The Remains of the Day in 1993 reunited him with Merchant-Ivory and Emma Thompson. Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel and set in 1950s post-war Britain, it cast Hopkins as the butler Stevens, a part he names among his favourites. David Hunter of The Hollywood Reporter called the performance "colossal" and a "tour de force." The British Film Institute ranked the film the 64th greatest British film of the 20th century. Hopkins won the BAFTA for Best Actor and earned an Oscar nomination. More nominations followed for Nixon in 1995 and Amistad in 1997. He also played the Oxford academic C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands.

  Twice in this period Hopkins worked with Bart the Bear, in Legends of the Fall in 1994 and The Edge in 1997. The trainer Lynn Seus said that "Tony Hopkins was absolutely brilliant with Bart." He added that Hopkins respected the bear like a fellow actor and would spend hours simply looking at him. Hopkins did many of his own scenes with the animal.

  In 2000 Hopkins narrated Ron Howard's live action remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. A Channel 4 poll that year ranked him seventh among the 100 Greatest Movie Stars. His favourite role, he has said, was Burt Munro in The World's Fastest Indian in 2005, and it was also his easiest, because he and Munro shared a similar outlook on life.

  In The Rite, released on the 28th of January 2011, Hopkins played a priest who is an expert in exorcisms. Hopkins, an agnostic, reportedly wrote a line into the part: "Some days I don't know if I believe in God or Santa Claus or Tinkerbell." Later in 2011 he began playing Odin, the Allfather of Asgard, in Marvel's Thor. He returned to the role in 2013 and 2017. Between those films he played Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, opposite Helen Mirren as his wife, Alma Reville. He also played Methuselah in Darren Aronofsky's Noah in 2014.

  3637383942

• 7. Late Light

  ›

  In October 2015 Hopkins played an aging actor-manager known only as Sir in a BBC Two production of Ronald Harwood's The Dresser. The story is set in a London theatre during the Blitz, as Sir prepares to play King Lear with the help of his devoted dresser, Norman. Ian McKellen, Edward Fox and Emily Watson appeared with him. Hopkins called it "the highlight of my life," a chance to work with the actors he had run away from.

  In 2018 he explained why it mattered. At the National Theatre decades earlier, he said, he had known he had something in him but lacked discipline, and he thought, "I don't belong anywhere, I'm a loner." He carried that feeling for almost fifty years. Working with McKellen on The Dresser made him feel at home, as though the lack of belonging had been in his own imagination.

  From October 2016 Hopkins played Robert Ford in the HBO series Westworld and earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. On the 28th of May 2018 BBC Two broadcast his King Lear, with Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Jim Broadbent. It brought him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Vulture called his performance "devastating."

  In 2019 Hopkins played Pope Benedict XVI opposite Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis in Fernando Meirelles' The Two Popes. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August and began streaming on Netflix on the 20th of December 2019. Hopkins was delighted to work with Pryce. "We're both from Wales," he said. "He's from the north, and I'm from the south." Hopkins and Pryce, along with the screenwriter, all received nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and British Academy Film Awards.

  The Father arrived in 2020, with Hopkins as a man struggling with Alzheimer's disease and Olivia Colman as his daughter. Florian Zeller directed it from his own Tony-nominated play Le Père. After its Sundance premiere, critics called Hopkins a standout and an Oscar frontrunner. It was released on the 18th of December 2020. Hopkins won the BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role, his fourth BAFTA overall and his third for Best Actor. He also won his second Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the oldest person to win an acting Oscar.

  Hopkins did not attend the ceremony. The next day he posted a video from Wales: "Here I am in my homeland in Wales. And at 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award." He also paid tribute to fellow nominee Chadwick Boseman, who had died the previous year.

  In Armageddon Time, directed by James Gray, Hopkins played a kindly grandfather, inspired by his own grandfather, who had encouraged him to act. A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Hopkins finds the essential grit hiding underneath the twinkle." He then reunited with Florian Zeller for The Son, alongside Hugh Jackman. In 2023 he played the humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton in One Life and Sigmund Freud in Freud's Last Session. In 2024 he played Herod the Great in the Netflix film Mary.

  4062636470

• 8. Music, Causes and Home

  ›

  In 1986 Hopkins released a single called Distant Star, which peaked at number 75 in the UK singles chart. He has said he composed music all his life and would have liked to attend music college if he had been clever enough at school. In 2007 he announced a temporary retirement from the screen to tour the world. His concert works, orchestrated with Stephen Barton, include The Masque of Time, premiered by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in October 2008, and Schizoid Salsa.

  On the 31st of October 2011 the conductor André Rieu released an album built around a waltz Hopkins had composed in 1964, at the age of 26. Hopkins had never heard And the Waltz Goes On before Rieu's orchestra premiered it in Vienna. In January 2012 he released Composer, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Its nine pieces include one called Margam, in tribute to his home town. In January 2025 he hosted a gala concert of his own compositions in Riyadh, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

  Hopkins also directed. His 1990 film Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, about the Welsh poet, was his screen directing debut. In 1995 he directed August, an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya set in Wales. His first screenplay, the experimental drama Slipstream, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. He directed and scored it himself.

  In 1998 Hopkins donated £1 million toward the £3 million the National Trust needed to buy parts of Snowdon. He was President of the Trust's Snowdonia Appeal and had written Anthony Hopkins' Snowdonia, published in 1995. A 2004 Welsh poll named him among the 100 Welsh Heroes. He has been a patron of the YMCA in Port Talbot for more than 20 years. The Anthony Hopkins Centre, a £2.3 million wing at his old college in Cardiff, opened in 1999 with his help. In 1992 he helped open the first intensive rehabilitation unit of the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust, at Downview prison in Surrey. On the 23rd of February 2008 he unveiled a statue of the comedian Tommy Cooper in Caerphilly, wearing Cooper's trademark fez and performing a comic routine.

  His honours include a CBE in 1987 and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 1993. He became a freeman of Port Talbot in 1996. In 2006 Gwyneth Paltrow presented him with the Cecil B. DeMille Award. In 2008 Richard Attenborough presented him with the BAFTA Fellowship.

  Hopkins has homes in Malibu, California, and became a naturalised American citizen on the 12th of April 2000 while keeping his British citizenship. In January 2025 the Palisades Fire destroyed two neighbouring homes he owned in Pacific Palisades. He has been married three times. His marriage to Petronella Barker ran from 1966 to 1972, and his marriage to Jennifer Lynton from 1973 to 2002. Since 2003 he has been married to Stella Arroyave, a Colombian-born antiques dealer, whom he credits with helping him through depression. His daughter from his first marriage is estranged from him. "I guess I am selfish," he has said. "I have not been a good husband or father."

  He lost 5 stone 10 pounds, about 36 kilograms, between 2008 and 2010. He has a cat named Niblo, adopted in Budapest. When he said he would love to appear in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, its writer John Sullivan created the villain Danny Driscoll with him in mind. Filming clashed with The Silence of the Lambs, and the part went to Roy Marsden. In November 2025 Hopkins published his memoir, We Did OK, Kid, with Simon and Schuster.

  9193949543