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"My epitaph, if I ever have one, will be, 'what was that all about'" says Anthony Hopkins. His up and down career bears that out. Some actors may think that if they haven't become movie stars by the time they're 30, they might as well pack it in. Hopkins began acting at 18, didn't make his first feature film until he was 31, and didn't really become a top-flight star until the age of 54. His career before The Silence of the Lambs was a roller coaster of respected hits (The Lion in Winter, The Elephant Man, Howards End) and lurid trash (Hollywood Wives, Audrey Rose, Magic). Anthony Hopkins' career proves that talent will out - though it may take a few decades. The year 1937 produced a bumper crop of film greats: Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson. Anthony Hopkins just got in under the wire; he was born on New Year's Eve of that year. Philip Anthony Hopkins' early years in Port Talbot, Wales, were neither euphoric nor dreadful. The only child of the town baker, he never suffered want or neglect. His doting mother was from the Yeats family - not William Butler's, but the coincidence made young Anthony fond of the poet's work. School was not a success for the dreamy, isolated youth. He was not the rough hell-raiser one associates with steel town rowdies. Schoolwork didn't interest him in the slightest; he spent his free time playing the piano, buried in a book, or walking through the countryside. Only in a select circle of friends did Hopkins cut loose and show the devilish side of his personality, as a raconteur and mimic. Teachers and his parents worried. Anyone who' heard the words "not working up to your potential" will sympathize. Hopkins' talent as an impersonator might have -heaven forbid- led to a career as the Welsh Rich Little. Though that never came topass, he continues today eerily on-target imitations of co-stars and directors. Once, to his horror, he found Laurence Olivier was standing right behind him during his Olivier impression. "Doesn't sound a thing like me!" the director snapped. Sports and school plays held no charms for Hopkins, who graduated prepared to do not much of anything with his life. It wasn't until 1955, when the 18-year-old was invited to participate in local YMCA plays, that he found something that gave his world meaning. Suddenly he had an ambition. "I just want to be famous," he explained two years ago, "to have world-wide acclaim. All my life I'd longed for a huge hit, to see my name large on a poster for some film."
Hopkins attended the Cardiff School of Music and Drama, then the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his London stage debut in 1964 in a small role in Julius Caesar; he also made his fil debut that year - singing in a pub - in a short titled The White Bus. That same year he married for the first time, producing his only child, Abigail. His illusions about the Great British Theatrical Tradition were pretty much shattered after a few years at Olivier's National Theatre. The imperious directors, the high-down classics did not appeal to the temperamental and impatient young man. "I belong to the Robert Mitchum school of acting," he acknowledged. "Just show up and learn your lines." To everyone's horror, Hpokins walked out on Olivier. His co-workers, friends, and family told him his career was over. No one walked out on the country's most revered theater, much less on the Great Olivier. But within weeks, Hopkins was pulled back on track. It would be difficult to make a better screen debut than in The Lion in Winter (1967). Star Peter O'Toole plucked him from the National and thrust Hopkins into the fire, playing the future King Richard I, opposite Katharine Hepburn. Filming was a terrifying, exhausting experience, though Hepburn roughly took him by the scruff of the neck and trained him in camera technique. Hopkins was certainly handsome enough to be a film star: his bright blue eyes and the devilish smile in particular set him apart, and when he grows a beard (as he has in several roles), he takes on a rakish charm to rival Errol Flynn. Though he could be a moody perfectionist early in his career, most of Hopkins' co-workers have found him likable, professional, and quietly sociable. |
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Whether or not it's his Welsh upbringing, Anthony Hopkins has a healthy, and a very refreshing, disdain for both his profession and its legends. "I wasn't interested in becoming a classical actor," he says. "I don't like Shakespeare. I'd rather be in Malibu" - heresy in the acting profession. But, as he told reporter Lawrence Grobel last year, "Most actors are pretty simpleminded people who think they're complicated." He did have his troubles, though, and they nearly ended his career by the mid-1970s. Hopkins had been a heavy drinker since his 20s, and this soon became a very big problem for both his professional and personal life. It wasn't until 1975 that he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was able to quit. He's a much happier person, now; 20 years ago he admitted, "I'm very violent with a nasty temper." Recently, a calmer and more philosophical Hopkins said, "I treat my own life like a game...I'm quite normal, believe me." His first starring film role was in the British spy thriller When Eight Bells Toll, shot late in 1969. It didn't make Hopkins a star, but it did introduce him to his second and current wife, production assistant Jennifer Lynton. When his RADA associates teased him about "lowering" himself to films, Hopkins replied logically, "Nobody makes money playing Shakespeare." Hopkins was never a snob about television either, appearing in that medium as early as The Three Sisters in 1969. He has done more television than theater or films, spending much of the early 1970s in such British high-class "telly" productions as Uncle Vanya, War and Peace, and The Edwardians. Not all his TV stints were so sublime, of course, his first American effort was in an ill-advised remake of Dark Victory (1976) with Elizabeth Montgomery in Bette Davis' role. Since then, he's alternated well-received fare like Kean, The Bunker (as Hitler, of all people), and Ibsen's Little Eyolf with such enjoyable, gilded trash as Hollywood Wives with Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson, and Stephanie Powers. Of that 1985 Hoppkins laughed, "It's so nice to put on such lovely clothes and to walk around seeing all these pretty ladies." He never saw the show and today can't even recall his character's name. But it's for his films that he is best known. He co-starred with Emma Thompson in the superb The Remains of the Day and Howards End, with Mel Gibson in The Bounty, and with John Hurt in The Elephant Man. For all his stage work, Hopkins has become, to his vast delight, a Movie Star. He has often been called the "new Richard Burton" and the "new Olivier," but some critics maintain that Hopkins is more subtle and versatile, and less mannered, than either of those actors. Despite his courtliness and charm, Anthony Hopkins has a dangerous side, still. He does not suffer fools gladly, be they dictatorial directors or nosy reporters. He's told off more directors than he cares to remember, and interviewers are informed that the subjects of AA and his first marriage are off-limits. He even had the temerity to admit to a British reporter that he prefers America. "It's such a wonderful place. They are vigorous and generous people. I've long felt I was born to live here. I love those wide roads and vistas." Sir Anthony (he was knighted in 1993) also admits a fondness for motels, coffee shops, and I Love Lucy. "I'm what you'd call an Amerophile." Everyone, including Hopkins, thought Jack Nicholson would get the role of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. It made him a star, and he brought a weird charm to the cannibalistic serial killer. Hopkins saw the film as a "fairy tale" with the FBI agent played by Jodie Foster "sent out by the king to kill the monster."
Hopkins has never been clever (or lucky) enough to sidestep any kind of typecasting. He never ceases to surprise, to take chances. His recent choices prove this: Hopkins put in a broad comic turn in 1994's The Road to Wellville, a notable flop in a year littered with notable flops. He then turned in a strong, intelligent performance in Legends of the Fall, and is even now preparing for one of his most bizarre and challenging roles. The man who played Richard I, Captain Bligh, and Hitler will next be seen in the title role of Oliver Stone's Nixon. No matter what one thinks of Stone or of the late president, Anthony Hopkins will certainly prove worth watching. |
