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Looking for a change of pace,
Anthony Hopkins moves from last year's
scariest villain to the hero of
"Bram Stoker's Dracula."
Anthony Hopkins may have one of the key supporting roles in Bram Stoker's Dracula--that of Professor Van Helsing--but he stills finds the film's style hard to pin down with words. "I don't know what it's going to be, exactly," he admits, "because it changed so much. It's kind of sensual, as well as baroque, almost like an Edgar Allan Poe piece more than Stoker, though they do follow his story. I read the book some time ago, and I do believe the film is going to be better."
It's surprising enough that anyone is doing a new version of Stoker's novel at all, much less that it has attracted an actor as important as Hopkins. But the Welsh-born Oscar-winner for last year's The Silence of the Lambs claims that he's always looking for variety. "I want the roles I play to be different," he says, "I blank out everything I've done in the past; I don't compare them, otherwise I'd get bogged down. I just take a part and do something with it. It's futile examining and comparing things. Why bother? I'm not interested in what I have and haven't done. When I played Van Helsing, I gave all my time to that. I couldn't waste time thinking about whether I had done this sort of part before."
Nor could Hopkins concern himself with others who had played this particular role before, such as the revered Sir Laurence Olivier in John Badham's 1979 film. In fact, the only version of Dracula he'd seen before taking the role of the Dutch vampire destroyer was Bela Lugosi's original. To Hopkins, the role of Van Helsing in the James V. Hart-scripted film represented an opportunity to work with one of the world's greatest directors.
"My agent phoned up and asked if I'd like to work with Francis Ford Coppola," Hopkins recalls. "He sent the script over, and I had about a day to skim through it. I'm not a fast reader, so I just got the general idea of it. Then I went to see Francis, and he asked, 'Would you like to play Van Helsing?' I said, 'Yes.' Who wouldn't want to work with him? He's a great director, a genius."
It's Coppola's very status that makes Bram Stoker's Dracula seem so promising--not just to Hopkins, but to movie fans the world over. Never before in movie history has such a stellar director tackled such a traditional horror topic, and the results can only be fascinating. The cast he's assembled is certainly interesting, demonstrating Coppola's excellent knack for casting. As the only long-established actor in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Hopkins found it "terrific" to work with the young cast, saying, "I really had a good time."
Gary Oldman, as Count Dracula himself, is Hopkins' chief screen nemesis--but since this version follows the original novel closely, Van Helsing and the vampire don't appear together often. "I just had two scenes with Gary--the confrontation in the abbey, then the one at the end," Hopkins reveals. "I worked primarily with Winona Ryder, Richard Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell and Keanu Reeves, who plays Jonathan Harker."
Despite their lack of shared screen time, Hopkins notes that an interesting relationship is developed between the professor and the Count in this dramatization. "There's a very surprising opening to the film that I don;t want to talk about," Hopkins says. "It shows that Van Helsing knows Dracula, and has known him for years." The actor doesn't elaborate on this intriguing idea, leaving audiences to discover it when they see the film.
Although Hopkins does not consider The Silence of the Lambs a horror film, he readily compares the filmmaking styles of Coppola and Silence director Jonathan Demme. "Demme just directs very straight on," Hopkins explains. "You have the script, and you come out to the set, you rehearse a little and you do it. With Coppola, it's a much more complicated process. You rehearse for three weeks, you improvise and the script changes all the time. There's constant rewriting, and then you have three weeks off.
I don't know what Coppola does for those three weeks, but when you come back and start filming," the actor continues, "you do many takes, many versions of the scene, and you still improvise. It's very interesting. He's there on the set with you all the time, he doesn't sit in the Silver Fish," Hopkins says. (At the time this interview was conducted, some articles claimed that Coppola directed Dracula entirely from within his "Silver Fish", a trailer always on the set, filled with electronic and video gear.)
Though Coppola was always supportive, working on the film was an adventure for Hopkins. "You never knew quite what was going to happen," he says. "Going to the set, I'd wonder, 'What's going to happen today?' And then the scene would evolve as it went, and out of you--he'd get a scene out of everyone. He'd create magical things, extraordinary things. I don't know how he does it."
Creating the character of Van Helsing was a true collaboration between actor and director. "We mutually agreed that there has been a kind of darker, hidden side to Van Helsing," Hopkins reveals. "In Stoker's book, one of the younger characters says he doesn't trust Van Helsing--he thinks he's as crazy as Dracula. They're as scared of him as they are of the Count, so I wanted to make him a much more..." Hopkins pauses, searching for the right word, "passionate figure, who'd been through all kinds of crevices in life, deep down into the pit, and comes out the other side as a man who's been cleansed by all that."
Van Helsing, the actor agrees, is one who knows evil because he's seen it. "When he comes out on the other side of this journey," Hopkins notes, "he understands Dracula. As Van Helsing, I have a great dueling scar down my face. I wanted to bring this deeper side to him, make him a man who understands he mysteries of life, and has dabbled in all kinds of disciplines, alchemy and black magic, who's drunk absinthe and smoked opium. He was experimental, like many creative people; he was self-destructive, yet managed to survive."
Hopkins is a thoughtful man who likes to assume the stance of someone who isn't thoughtful, someone who reacts to new ideas intuitively and impulsively. But anyone who's seen his performances down through the years since his movie debut in 1968's The Lion in Winter knows that Hopkins does think through his work--the proof is there on the screen. He claims to approach acting in the same manner as Robert Mitchum, his favorite screen actor.
"It's better than working for a living, as Mitchum says," muses Hopkins. "He's my favorite because he just does it. I like that attitude. I think he's the greatest film actor around--he's always there, and doesn't make a fuss about it. He's like Jodie Foster--he looks like he's doing nothing. Donald Pleasence worked with Mitchum, and said that for a moment he didn't know what Mitchum was doing. He didn't seem to be doing anything, he could hardly even hear him speak. The he watched the rushes, and there it was, large as life. I like that. You come in, do it and go home."
Rather like Van Helsing, Hopkins has been through the fires of life; in recent interviews, he admits to having had--like, sadly, all too many great British actors--a serious drinking problem, which he's now overcome. He now has an aura of serenity, of willingness to accept life on its own terms and not ask more of it than it can deliver. And, more importantly, he doesn't make too many demands on himself. It's clear, reading between the lines of the interview that Hopkins is a humble man, one who's flattered, yet puzzled, by the acclaim he's received.
"I'm mystified by the process of acting," he admits candidly. "I don't understand what I do. I don't rate myself in any way. I just do what's in front of me. I'm very pleased when it goes well and it's successful, of course. I'm enjoying this moment. But I'm very realistic. I've been around many years now, and I enjoy working more and more, but I don't understand the process. I just do it."
Born in Port Talbot, Wales, in 1937, Hopkins attended the Cardiff College of Music and Drama for two years, eventually being accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Although the late Richard Burton also hailed from Port Talbot, Hopkins didn't necessarily consider him an inspiration. "I thought he was a very good actor, and it's sad he died so young, but I went my own way," Hopkins says. "I became an actor because I couldn't do anything else."
Since his Lion in Winter debut, Hopkins has been very active on both sides of the Atlantic, both in films and --surprisingly enough for an actor of his prestige--very often in made-for-TV movies. In fact, he probably made more fans for his telefilm All Creatures Great and Small (1974) than he did with starring roles in movies like The Looking Glass War and When Eight Bells Toll. Among his genre credits are Robert Wise's 1977 reincarnation tale Audrey Rose, the following year's deadly-dummy thriller Magic and David Lynch's 1980 film version of The Elephant Man.
Although he's compiled a lengthy résumé of acclaimed stage performances, Hopkins prefers film acting and isn't troubled at all by the fragmented nature of movie-making, wherein on Monday you can be playing the last scene in the film, and on Tuesday, the first. "It comes back to the fact that that's what you're expected to do," Hopkins explains. "If you set your mind to doing that, you come in, you do it, and it's easy, dead easy. You can make it difficult, you can complain, but I don't do that; I say, 'Where do you want me to stand?' and do it. If you make it easy for yourself, it becomes easy. If you make it difficult for yourself, then it'll be difficult, and if you make it difficult for other people, they'll make it difficult for you.
I've been very lucky," Hopkins continues. "I've had a good, wide range of choices, like playing Bligh, Lecter, and my character in Howards End. When you get hold of a character, you find a way of getting into him. It's like driving a luxury car, you know. You get up in the morning, you start up the engine--tat's exactly what it's like for me. You're inside a vast computer, or your own little space module, which is your mind. I don't cut off from the rest of the film company; I have coffee, I laugh, I joke around. But when they say, 'Stand by for the scene,' I close my eyes for a minute, and I go inside this space module, press a few buttons and off I go."
To date, Hopkins' favorite role is the one that also won him the most fans: Hannibal (the Cannibal) Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. He claims that he had a good feeling about the movie even while it was being made. "I thought it was going to be a successful film, because it was such a successful book," he says. "Jonathan Demme was such a good director that all I had to do was show up and do it. I don't know how I do these things; I'm really very simple, you know."
The actor also professes a great deal of admiration for his Lambs co-star and fellow Oscar-winner Jodie Foster. "She's a superb film actress," Hopkins praises. "I've been around her a great deal, and I'd seen her work before; I'm a great admirer of her. She always gives the impression, like any good actor, that she doesn't do anything. Very subtle; you don't have to 'act' on screen."
As for the possibility of a Lambs sequel, Hopkins confirms that he has been approached to play Lecter again. "They've talked to me about it, and of course, I'd do it, if it's a good script. I know Jonathan Demme would like to do the sequel, if it's a good story, but I don't know what shape the book's in; I don't know if it's completed yet, or even if Thomas Harris is writing it."
In the meantime, the busy star has finished Spotswood, due for release later in 1992, a new version of The Trial and John Schlesinger's The Innocent. And he has aspirations beyond acting as well. "I'm going to direct a film next year, but I'm not going to say what it is, because it's just on paper," he reveals. "Being an actor myself, I can see young actors struggling around not knowing how to do a scene, and--I've done it in the past, so I know I can do it again--I can go up to them and say, 'Just try this. Do that. Keep it simple.' They do it, and it works. I love movies. It's the best way to work; I come alive when I'm working on a movie."
