IN RECENT years Anthony Hopkins, dubbed by many as one of the greatest actors of our time, has chosen an eclectic array of roles in which to shine. These include President Richard Nixon, Zorro, President John Quincy Adams and his Oscar winning Hannibal 'the Cannibal' Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. In the new drama Meet Joe Black, the consummate actor takes on the persona of William Parrish, a wealthy businessman facing his 65th birthday when Death, in the attractive form of Brad Pitt, confronts him. Donning the name Joe Black, Death makes a deal with Parrish--he will allow the tycoon more time to be with his family if he will teach him about life.

Hopkins admits that he was immediately intrigued by the concept of this movie. "As soon as I read this script I knew I had to do it. It's very good, very fine, a very romantic film. I think audiences are going to be entranced by it. I'm a big movie fan and this is a real movie-movie."

Although he jumped at the chance of participating in the film, the actor confesses that the actual process of being cast wasn't particularly fascinating. "There is nothing ever dramatic about these events. My agent phoned me up and said, 'There are two films. One is called Meet Joe Black and the other is called Instinct. Read both scripts. You can't do both because they'll dash. See which one you like.' So I read both of them and they were both equally good, but different. I didn't know what to say. He said, 'The one that goes first is Meet Joe Black so, do you want to work straight away after Zorro?' I said, 'Yeah, let's do it.'"

In the movie, William Parrish is awakened in the middle of the night by a strange and foreboding voice. The next day, alone in his office, he suffers what appears to be a heart attack but the pain leaves as quickly as it strikes. That evening, the enigmatic Joe Black turns up at Parrish's home. For Hopkins, the initial confrontation between Black and his character was the pivotal scene in the movie.

"I said to Marty (Brest, the director), 'At what point do I believe this? This is kind of far-fetched.' There was nothing in the writing to indicate that I've bought it. How the hell do I believe that this is Death? It could be a con trick. But without analyzing it too much, I thought, 'Well, I heard that voice in my head in the office earlier that day - either I'm going nuts or there's some power here that's beyond me and I don't understand it. I don't know how the scene plays. I haven't seen it in some time. I don't know if it's spooky enough, but I just had to make that quantum leap into hoping the audience accepts it. I think I played it like somebody slightly in a trance, or somebody who doesn't know what the hell is going on.

According to Hopkins, his onscreen rapport with Brad Pitt is just an extension of their rapport behind the cameras. "I've worked with Brad before on Legends of the Fall, and we get on very well. He has a great sense of humor, he's lighthearted and I like working with him. I'm sure he takes it all seriously, but he's friendly, very generous, so it makes doing the scene a pleasure."

Occasionally Hopkins has been confronted about his surprising indifference to the movies he's made. The actor takes this opportunity to comment, "It's not indifference. Maybe it's a defense of mine to make it all seem insignificant. I think I'm always trying to dismiss them because it doesn't feel like work because I enjoy it so much. But I work really hard. For example, I got the script of Meet Joe Black and I thought, 'What I've got to do is just learn it.' I went over it many, many times so I knew the text so well that I could go onto the set and have no fears at all that I'm not going to know what I'm doing. It's like the air in a helium balloon, if I don't learn the lines I can't take off. I've seen actors struggling. They haven't done their homework and they come on set and they don't know their lines, or they don't know them well enough, and you see the panic. It's like a screen between them and the camera. You can't do that. Knowing the lines gives you the real power. You don't have to know what the character ate for breakfast because that's not necessary. The audience isn't going to see that anyway. But you convey to the camera, and ultimately to the audience, the action of the scene. What is the scene about? What am I doing? For example, in the office scene with Brad (where I tell him to stop romancing my daughter), I remembered about four weeks before we did that scene that I had all these big speeches to learn. So I'd sit in my chair back at the hotel and went over it eve ryday. Once I was secure in that, I'd think, 'What is the intention of the scene? What am I doing? I'm giving him notice to back off from my daughter.' That gives the dynamic to the scene. So it's not indifference, I really do work really hard at it."

And about Death itself, the actor reflects, "None of us knows the answer. The big secret. None of us has any clue what's going to happen. I saw Meet Joe Black in a studio theatre in Los Angeles for about a dozen people and a couple of people had to race out to the bathroom because they were crying. It gets at your heart that one day it's all going to be over. I think you have to live life and have a good time and not worry too much about things. Live for the mo ment. It's all too short. It's like the last few lines in Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, 'Why didn't we appreciate things more when we were alive?' So much passes us by, and one day it will be over. My father used to say when anyone died, 'Well, he's learned the big secret.' I remember standing at the foot of his bed when he was dying. I thought, 'Now you've learned the big secret as well.' I think it was Anne Boleyn who said to the Bishop of London, who came to give her the last rites just before she went to the scaffold to be executed, 'Soon I shall be wiser than you.' That's wonderful."

As the actor approaches his 61st birthday, does his mortality play a part in the way he lives his life? "There's a speech at the end of the movie, at the party, where Parrish says that life goes by in a flash - appreciate it, love it, live it, relish it because it's all we've got, and we waste so much time and throw so much of it away. My favorite line in the film is when I say, 'It's hard to let go isn't it?' And Brad says, 'Yes, it is.' And I say, 'That's life.' Life is wonderful. I live alone and I travel alone and I don't have attachments to people. I have a few pals. Maybe it's the wrong way to live, I'm probably very selfish, but I don't need anything in life, not like I used to. My grandfather asked me once, What do you want to be when you grow up?' And I said, 'A drifter.' And that's what I became. I've tried to be gregarious and be a part of a group, but I just don't feel comfortable. I just like being on my own.

For a person who loves his solitude, Hopkins surprised his friends when he decided to throw a big party for himself to celebrate his 60th birthday.

"A friend of mine said, 'But you hate parties!' I said, 'Well, I'm going to be 60.' There were people there who I hadn't seen for years. I decided to invite them all. I didn't know if they could come. I didn't know if some of them were alive. But they all turned up at the door of the restaurant at the same time, 120 of them. We had a great evening. We had a laugh, I made a little speech, and they all went home!"

Fortuitously, the schedule for the movie Instinct changed and Hopkins was able to do it as well as Meet Joe Black. He says of the former, "It's a very powerful film. Cuba Gooding plays the psychiatrist and I play a guy who has killed a few people in Africa. He's not Hannibal Lecter, but I'm in jail again!"

And speaking of Lecter, with rumors abounding that there will finally be a sequel to Silence of the Lambs, it seemed an appropriate occasion to inquire if the gossip is true. "I have no idea," he says emphatically. "I don't know if the book exists or if Tom Harris exists. I think he's a figment of our imagination!

"I think there's a big game being played. I don't care, I have better things to do than worry about whether I'm going to do that again. If it's a good book and it's turned into a good script--yes.

"If it's not a good book or script--no!"