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(orchestral music)
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- I like to be center stage
(laughs)
taking the big parts.
I'm not interested in being worthy,
I'm not interested in being virtuous
and standing there for the good of the company.
I'm simply not interested in that.
It's the way I'm constructed.
It's my own megalomaniacal selfishness, I suppose.
I'm not interested in all that experimentation,
and we've all got a knuckle under and obey the director.
I say, bollocks.
- [Narrator] In 1991, in The Silence of the Lambs
by Jonathan Demme,
Anthony Hopkins achieves worldwide success,
playing a cannibalistic psychopath imprisoned in a cage.
The most famous serial killer of all time, Hannibal Lecter.
Even though he was on screen
for only 20 minutes throughout the movie,
it's enough to propel him to the top of Hollywood
at almost 60 years old,
and after more than 30 years of acting.
The biggest directors fight over him,
like Francis Ford Coppola who casts him in Dracula.
- Action!
(door slamming)
- Mina!
(roars)
- The thing is going to happen pretty fast.
- [Hopkins] Yes. - You confront them,
they attack you,
Van Helsing challenges you,
you make your lay statement and then you leave.
- [Narrator] Even Steven Spielberg wants him
to play the president of the United States in Amistad.
- Yeah.
- And you're coming down with your secretary.
This was something, you can trial this.
But this is a better location.
- Good. - So we'll do that first.
- And have you seen the house of the General?
- No.
- Come here, because you're going to love this.
- [Narrator] 1992 is a turning point for him.
In addition to becoming the favorite actor of James Ivory,
it's also the year that he is cemented
among the greatest actors of all time
for his iconic role in The Silence of the Lambs.
- And the Oscar goes to Anthony Hopkins
in The Silence of The Lambs.
(crowd applause)
- I sat there that evening in the Oscars
and Ted Tally picked up the best screenplay writer.
And at that moment I thought, "I think I've got the Oscar,"
and Kathy Bates came on stage to present it
and I knew she was going to call my name.
(applause)
First of all, before I say on,
I want to say hello to my mother.
She's in Wales watching this on television
with Eve and Jean and Jill and Tony.
My father died 11 years ago tonight,
so maybe he had something to do with this as well. (laughs)
And then I thought when I got up there to take the Oscar,
I thought, "Well now I can do some bad films,"
which I proceeded to do.
Doesn't matter really.
I touched the ceiling of my life, I suppose.
(soft piano music)
I love the coldness of life.
I love the inevitability of it all.
(soft piano music)
(car engine zooming)
I had no friends, because I rejected friends, I suppose.
So I was lonely.
I was a non-starter.
Very poor student.
I was convinced I was on the wrong planet.
(gentle piano music)
I think that those years were quite formative for me.
I was escaping, I think, from my sense
of being a kind of clodhopper.
Well, I was the source of worry.
I was the only child and I was the source of worry
of both my parents when I was a kid,
because I was so stupid at school.
I mean, I haven't got fashionable high flowing words
like, I was dyslexic,
I think I was just stupid.
And I couldn't figure out what anyone was talking about.
And I was the lonely kid at the top of the streets
staring at my thumbnail,
and all the other kids were down
the other end of the street.
My father used to say to my mother,
"There's something very wrong with this boy."
Which is not the way to give one self-confidence,
but they were worried about me.
But in a strange way, I had an idyllic childhood.
I remember the first four years very clearly.
I've got one of those, cursed and blessed
with images and a very long memory.
I can remember back to very early times,
probably about the age of two, something like that.
And I remember South Wales.
I was born in the rural part of Port Talbot,
a place called Margam.
And it really was like the Garden of Eden.
I remember our little front garden,
and it was really...
a couple of small trees there,
and it really was like a mini paradise.
And I can recall, when I close my eyes,
I can go back there and it's all changed now, of course,
but I can, the smells and the colors.
But when I went to school,
that was the beginning of the turning point for me.
When I realized I was different,
backward, more slow.
And I have no regret at all,
because that was the fire in the belly
that gave me enough anger and rage.
(car engines zooming)
My father was a pretty boisterous, tough old sort, really.
He was a remarkable man.
I loved him very much.
He was a baker by profession.
That's what he started.
And he took over, he was a baker with his father.
Good God.
Believe it or not I lived in here.
It's just like in my dreams.
Ruins.
Maybe it's a symbol of my own ruined life.
I don't know.
And I remember that sometimes,
the yellow look in his face around the gills,
and the sweat.
And he'd say, "Oh God."
And he'd do that, and I remember that God, he's worked hard.
Yeah, I think that's why I get angry sometimes.
- Do you think of your father often now?
- All the time.
- Yes.
- And as I get older, he's becoming me.
I'm him.
(audience laughs)
I remember I used to play the piano a lot.
I was a little artist, you could say.
I used to play Beethoven and all that stuff,
and Chopin, and all that.
And he was a baker,
and he used to ask me to come and help him in the shop.
Carry the cakes into the shop during school holidays.
Well I'd sort of get distracted.
And I remember sitting at the top of the house
where this piano was,
and I remember him coming out,
and "For God sakes," he'd say,
"I asked you to take those donuts into the shop."
"What the hell are you doing up here?"
I was playing the piano.
"So what's that you're playing?"
I remember him standing in the doorway
and he had flour dust in the hair on his arms.
Really hard worker.
He said, "What are you playing?"
I said, "Beethoven."
He said, "No wonder you went deaf." (laughs)
(crowd laughs)
I don't know what my role in the world is.
I came out here many years ago
because I wanted to be in movies, be an actor.
I was a bad boy.
I couldn't stand the British theater.
I couldn't stand any of it,
because I didn't feel I belonged there.
Nobody's fault.
I just didn't have it in my nature to be part of that group.
So I reinvented my life,
and I came out here some years ago,
and you see the result of it.
I'm pretty feisty.
I am rebellious and happy.
And so I want to give back to people.
Not because I'm on a crusade, far from it.
I just do this because I've got nothing better to do.
They give me a cup of coffee and some fruit in the morning.
So it keeps me off the streets,
keeps me out of trouble,
and I get some fun doing it.
These pretty beautiful girls here.
Women, women.
- (laughs)
- They're beautiful.
I get hugs from them all.
It's very nice.
- Some of the men hug me as well.
But it's lovely to see them opening up,
and if that's their response, then that makes me happy.
(gentle piano music)
- [Narrator] In 1965, after five years on stage
in Cardiff and then in London,
he is noticed by the legendary playwright and actor,
Sir Laurence Olivier,
who invites him to join him in the Royal National Theatre.
Hopkins becomes his understudy and eventually replaces him.
In his memoir, Laurence Olivier writes,
"An exceptionally promising young actor from the company,
named Anthony Hopkins, replaced me and played my role
as a cat with a mouse between its teeth."
(gentle piano music)
- Yeah, when I started out I just wanted to be famous.
I didn't want to become a great actor.
I didn't want to become a great Shakespearean actor.
I had no idea.
When people would say, "You're the next Olivier."
I didn't want to become the next Olivier.
I didn't want to stand in wrinkled tights
on The Old Vic stage for the rest of my life.
I had ideas beyond that.
(melancholic piano plays)
I was discontent, I was angry and fed up.
And I hated being part of an establishment
and hated doing Shakespeare.
It was all my own making.
I was the enemy within, you know?
It was all my own making.
It was nobody else's fault.
Everyone did their best to cater to my needs.
- [Interviewer] Were you drinking at that time?
- Oh yes, but all actors drink.
That was just an episode in my life,
that's over and done with now.
That's a boring episode of life.
But I don't think it helped,
but I was restless.
I wanted to get out, and I was frightened.
I was afraid I was taking on this monumental part,
and I never pretended that I had the courage
to do these great parts like Macbeth and King Lear.
I never said I could do them.
I never thought I had the courage to do them.
(melancholic piano plays)
I wanted it all.
I wanted to be successful,
and I wanted to be famous,
and I wanted to be in movies.
And I wanted to meet people like Katharine Hepburn,
and I want to meet Peter O'Toole,
and I met Peter O'Toole,
and I've met some great people,
some wonderful directors, some wonderful actors.
Would you say, Father, that I have the makings of a king?
- Splendid king.
- Would you expect me, Father, to give up without a fight?
- Of course you'll fight.
I raised you to.
- I don't care what you offer Phillip,
I don't care what plans you make,
I'll have the Aquitaine and Alais and the crown,
I'll not give up one to get the other.
I won't trade off Alais or Aquitaine
to that walking pustule!
No, your loving son will not.
I remember the first few days on the set of Lion in Winter,
and I'd done a movie test with Peter O'Toole
a few weeks before.
And he was on the test with me
reading off lines off the camera,
And I remember them saying, "Cut!"
And O'Toole saying, "You've got it. Fantastic."
(indistinct)
Bloody marvelous darling.
I'm a big star.
(laughing)
"Let's go and have a drink."
See, I love those guys, the drinkers,
because they were the best.
(audience laughing)
I love them, I love drunks.
I love that.
And Peter's a great boozer.
I had to give it up
because it nearly damn killed me in the end.
But I remember that sensation
of, "Oh yeah, that'd be marvelous."
But you have to have a certain vulnerability
and to be a certain amount of mess inside you.
I think to really succeed, you have to be really screwed up
to be successful in this business.
- [Interviewer] What did you learn from Katharine Hepburn?
What did you learn from Hepburn in that movie?
- She said to me, she said,
"Don't act, don't act, just speak the lines.
Be what you are."
I was playing Richard the Lionheart.
She knew.
She said, "You look good. You've got a good head.
You've got a good shoulders on you."
She said, "You've got all the advantages,
so don't act, don't overact."
She said, "Don't be theatrical."
I said, "Well what do I do?"
She said, "Speak the lines."
Which sounds very simplistic, but I think she was right.
She's talking about filmmaking.
Don't overact.
Don't show too much.
We could tangle spiders on the webs you weave.
- If I'm so devious, why don't you go?
Don't stand there quivering in limbo.
Love me, little lamb, or leave me.
- You were influenced by the movies,
weren't you, the actors?
We all were.
- I was brought up on movies.
I have a nice, my parents were quite disciplined.
I used to go to a movie once a week, or twice a week,
but I used to watch
all those old Warner Brothers movies,
Bogart and all that lot.
- [Interviewer] Yeah, yeah.
- And I used to learn the script.
- You could?
- I knew you were going to ask me this.
You want me to do one?
- Speak the script, yeah.
- Well, okay.
- But you remember those scripts?
- Yes.
My name is Spade, Sam Spade.
License number 357896,
issued by the police department of San Francisco.
Occupation private detective,
sometimes known as private eye.
- Well done!
(audience laughs and applauds)
- That's Bogart.
(applause)
- As close to Lauren Bacall as I've ever heard.
(audience laughing)
Very nice.
It's just another facet of your-
- Yeah, very slick (indistinct) going up for life.
I'll tell you about it.
So it's not bad is it?
- Yeah, it's good, and you remember the lines definitely.
- Yes, I remember the lines
I learned all that before I came on here.
I knew you were going to ask me.
(laughs)
- For God's sake, don't let them know all the secrets.
- I wasn't born here.
- Yeah
(gentle piano music)
- [Narrator] At age 37, Anthony Hopkins decides
to leave England and try his luck in Hollywood.
He starts another chapter of his life,
following the example of Humphrey Bogart,
James Cagney, and Marlon Brando.
This chapter is undoubtedly the most intense.
Anthony Hopkins, still grapples with a demon
that will not let go, alcohol.
His lack of self-confidence and his discomfort,
as he often says, encourages his drinking.
Hollywood would be his hell,
and then later, his redemption.
(orchestral music)
(car motor rumbling)
- Well, I found tequila when I came here
and I drunk enough of that to unzip my brain
and drive me crazy,
and then I woke up and came to my senses.
I thought, "Well, I'm going to blow it all
if I don't stop doing this nonsense."
I was trouble, I know.
I was just a bore really.
And I couldn't fit in, and I just didn't feel at home.
And that was my problem.
I'm just bad tempered, trying too much and all that.
And it all came to a bit of a crisis,
and I walked out.
I left in the middle of a production,
which was a very drastic thing to do.
I hurt a few people,
but it's the only way I knew how to survive
whatever I was going through.
And so I got out.
And I was in work, I started work fairly soon after that.
I suppose I went through a sort of, not a breakdown,
but I just felt very unhappy and unsettled,
and I had no sense of self-confidence at all.
It's not I fear death or the end of it all,
but I am aware of it.
I'm 57 years of age,
and I want to have the richest years of my life ahead of me.
And I plan to, and I'm going to.
(music playing softly)
When I first came to California, out here in Santa Monica,
it was like being on another planet.
I thought they were different race of people.
Everyone in those days looked very glamorous,
and I thought they were all tall blonde girls
and good looking guys.
(soft piano music)
I like the shallowness of it all in a way.
Jonathan Miller said to me when he came out here,
He said, "How can you live here?
It's like living on the moon."
I said, "Well, it's all right.
I like it here."
There's a lovely time in the evening, like now,
when it feels very, very peaceful and it just feels right.
I carry that feeling around with me
most of my time now,
It's that thing where it just feels right inside, you know?
No contention, no argument,
no fighting, no belligerence.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] For him, California becomes another planet,
one on which he lives with his second wife, Jennifer Lynton,
who he met in England while she was working
as a production assistant.
(soft music)
There, Anthony Hopkins left his first wife Petronella,
and the child they had together, his daughter, Abigail.
America for Hopkins is the world of possibilities.
Luck smiles on him, when in '78, Richard Attenborough
offers him a key role in his career,
as a mad ventriloquist in the little known film, Magic.
(applause) - You ruined the rising aces.
- So what, screw it.
You see the broad with the big jugs?
- You mean the young lady in the feathers?
Yeah I see her, so what?
- Wonder if she'd like a roll in the shavings with me?
(audience laughs)
- I don't think you're very funny.
- Well they do.
(audience laughs)
- What about the vent though, first of all,
how difficult is it to throw your voice like that
without moving your lips as they say?
- Well I found it fairly easy, maybe because I'm an actor
and you have to keep your voice flexible,
and I was willing to learn.
And I decided that the only way I could do it
was to enjoy it.
And I've been a mimic as well,
so I found it fairly easy, and I had a good teacher.
Now, maybe I was a good student.
- Can you still do it?
- Yes (indistinct)
- Like what?
- Yes I can,
(in high pitched voice) Hi, Michael.
How are you doing?
Good to see you.
Hi gang, you okay?
Fantastic.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
- Hey you know what I think?
- No, what do you think?
- We're going to be a star!
(dramatic orchestra music)
- I find that acting has been
tremendously therapeutic for me.
So I think if I hadn't been an actor,
I probably would have been,
I don't know if I'd have been slightly criminal,
but I don't think I would have been a very nice human being.
I don't think I would have,
I think I would have eaten myself alive,
and acting has saved me from that in a way.
It's helped me to touch parts of my own personality,
I suppose, of my own inner darkness.
- [Narrator] Darkness, monsters, prejudice,
violence, humanity,
in 1980 with the film, The Elephant Man,
in his role as Doctor Treves,
who tries to come to the aid of John Hurt,
the famous man-elephant.
Anthony Hopkins puts on his Hollywood star clothes.
On set, the relationship between David Lynch
and Hopkins is appalling, but it works.
The film is a masterpiece,
and will forever remain one of his greatest roles.
- Basically, it's a very touching story
about a man called John Merrick,
who was so seriously deformed.
I don't know what the nature of his disease was,
but he had a very large head,
and the one side of his body totally deformed.
And he was a sideshow freak.
And he was cruelly beaten and treated very badly.
He was born like this.
(melancholy music)
(indistinct)
(melancholy music)
(thunder crashing)
- And the part I play is Dr. Frederick Treves.
And Treves found him in the circus, in the sideshow,
and took him back to the London hospital and kept him there.
(footsteps tapping)
(breathing heavily)
But John Merrick could speak,
and he could read, and he could write,
and he became a centerpiece for society in London.
This is about the 1880s.
- Mr. Merrick, I'd like you to meet my wife, Anne.
Anne, this is John Merrick.
(clock ticking)
- I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Merrick.
- I...
I...
I very...
(calm music)
- It's when Jonathan Demme sees David Lynch's film,
that he considers Anthony Hopkins for
The Silence of the Lambs.
This is the role of a serial killer,
a machiavellian cannibal.
No one has heard of the script in Hollywood,
but Hopkins quickly realizes the potential of such a role
and starts shaping the character.
Slicked black hair, glassy eyes, and a straight jacket.
The mask is made for him.
- I didn't want to play the evils,
because if you're playing a madman,
if you play the madness, it's ludicrous.
How do you play madness?
So I opted for playing the really super sane side of him,
the highly civilized section of Hannibal's mind.
And then all the evil that he is,
is there for the audience to make up for their own minds.
Good evening, Clarice.
- I thought you might like your drawings back, doctor.
Just until you get your view.
- How very thoughtful.
Or did Jack Crawford send you for one last wheedle
before you're both booted off the case?
- No, I came because I wanted to.
- People will say we're in love.
- Let me talk about some of the specifics of that,
well there's the noise you make, that (tongue clicks).
- Oh yeah.
- Yeah.
Now that presumably wasn't written,
that must've come from you, I would have thought,
or was that Jonathan Demme's idea?
- That happened on the spur of the moment.
I just put it in for a joke.
(laughs)
Because you heard Jonathan Demme laugh,
quietly so he didn't destroy the soundtrack.
And I just did it, it just came to me.
And I heard him say, "God," in the corner,
he was watching the camera,
he was on the monitor, watching the film.
And he said, "Cut."
He says, "You are so sick, Hopkins."
I said, "Was it over the top?"
He said, "Yeah," he said, "But I like it."
So we kept it in.
(hisses with tongue)
- [Narrator] It's with his hissing noise
that Anthony Hopkins chills the blood
of an entire generation,
and earns his stripes as Hollywood's greatest psychopath.
- Five, five, nine.
- [Narrator] The first to pay the price is Jodie Foster,
who still remembers it in 2016 on The Graham Norton Show.
- Is it true, did you never speak to Anthony Hopkins?
- Nope.
Never spoke to him.
He was scary.
(audience laughs)
The first day we had a reading,
we had like a little read-through.
I got there early, and then I went to the bathroom,
and I came back, everybody was sitting down.
We did the read-through of the film,
and by the end of it, I never wanted to talk to him again.
I was petrified.
- But you never passed backstage in a corridor?
- No, I avoided him.
(audience laughs)
I really avoided him.
And then I was eating a tuna fish sandwich.
It was the last day, and he came up to me, and he...
I guess he was sidled up to me.
And I said, I don't know, I sort of had a tear in my eye.
I was like, "I was really scared of you."
And he said, "I was scared of you!"
- May I ask your credentials?
- [Foster Voiceover] And by the time that we got
into our scenes together,
he was behind this glass partition
and he had to be unscrewed out of the glass partition
in order for us to communicate.
- Closer please.
Closer.
(footsteps slowly tapping)
- There were a few things that he added in
that for some reason, just sent shivers up my spine.
There's one moment where Lecter is going on at Clarice,
and saying, "You're just a rube,"
and, "You're some small-town hick."
And he started mimicking my accent,
and that just really upset me.
(laughs)
I guess as an actor, I got really...
it really took me off guard,
to have the actor who's playing opposite
of you start mimicking the accent
that you're using as an actor.
And he got to me.
And I think it really shows on screen actually.
- You know what you look like to me,
with your good bag and your cheap shoes?
You look like a rube.
A well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.
Good nutrition's given you some length of bone,
but you're not more than one generation
from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?
And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed,
pure West Virginia.
What is your father, dear?
Is he a coal miner?
Does he stink of the land?
And oh, how quickly the boys found you.
All those tedious, sticky fumblings
in the back seats of cars,
while you could only dream of getting out,
getting anywhere,
getting all the way to the FBI.
I understand monsters.
I understand tyrants.
I understand madmen.
I don't know what it is,
I have a sympathy with them, in a strange way.
I can understand what makes people tick
in these darker levels.
(screams)
(officer screams in pain)
- Jesus Christ!
(officer screams in pain)
- Ow, ow, ow.
(screams)
(ominous music)
(screams)
(breathing heavy)
- Hello.
So here we are at the Universal Studios.
(gentle piano music)
This is Dino De Laurentiis' production.
So we're going into the original set
that we have on Silence of the Lambs.
Where it's re-built.
Hello.
So this is the return to the original set,
the jail where they lock Dr. Lecter up.
It's funny being back here.
We started filming here last week,
and this is the corridor that Jodie Foster walked down.
So here we are back like old times.
I can't take any of this too seriously.
I can't take it seriously at all.
Anyway, it's fun.
It's all a game.
And these are the cells.
And this is where...
(gentle piano music)
(footsteps)
This was Lecter's cell.
So it is odd, to say the least,
to be back here.
(dramatic orchestra music)
- [Narrator] March 30th, 1992 is Oscar night.
Sometime earlier, the film's director,
Jonathan Demme told reporters,
"We created Hollywood's greatest villain
since Norman Bates in Psycho."
So when MC Billy Crystal enters the stage
wearing the Hannibal Lecter mask,
Hopkins realizes that whatever the verdict,
his interpretation of a fearsomely intelligent psychopath
is now legendary,
and that it has propelled him to the ranks of the greatest.
(audience laughing)
- [Narrator] His competitors in the best actor category
are Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro,
Nick Nolte, and Robin Williams.
(audience laughing)
(dramatic orchestra music)
(woman nervously laughing)
Hopkins would later say that the evening was life changing,
and that he finally felt legitimate
and accepted in this world that was not meant for him.
(applause)
- I'm having some of the academy over for dinner.
Care to join me?
(audience laughs)
- Yes, anytime.
- Anytime.
(laughs)
Good evening.
- Welcome, live at the St. James's Club LA,
cuddly cannibal, Anthony Hopkins.
(audience cheers)
- Anthony, welcome and congratulations.
- Thank you, Terry.
- Well, one of the reasons that I'm interviewing you
so far away, is because quite frankly, after that movie,
I'm fairly apprehensive of you,
and I imagine that most people
wouldn't really want to sit beside you at dinner.
Would they?
- No, they all get up and leave.
When I go into a restaurant, people just get up and leave.
(laughs)
No, people don't respond in any different way.
I tell them I'm a vegetarian.
(audience laughs)
- [Narrator] With an Oscar in his pocket,
Anthony Hopkins becomes one of Hollywood's
highest paid actors.
In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola
offers him the role of the vampire hunter in Dracula,
an adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel.
Scar on his face, crucifix in hand,
Anthony Hopkins is in his element.
(dramatic music)
Alongside Gary Oldman as Count Dracula,
Winona Ryder, and Keanu Reeves,
Anthony Hopkins immerses himself
in the obsessive filming and rehearsals imposed by Coppola,
a man known to push his actors to their limits.
- [Coppola] Let's stop the presses.
- [Hopkins] We don't have to change it.
We don't have to print it out.
- [Coppola] No but we should.
You have all these reasons,
every time we pin it down,
it's another nail out of my coffin.
(laughs)
(gentle music)
- We were up in Napa where we started rehearsing
at his home, this big sound stage.
And he said, "I want us to read
the whole book together, aloud."
It took two days.
And he said, "because I want us to absorb,
all of us, to absorb the book."
It was a marathon to read that book.
I don't have an analytical mind.
I'm not a very bright or intellectual man.
So I have a good instinct.
And my theory, for what it's worth,
is to know the text so well, the script so well,
because the word is powerful.
That's all I have to do.
That's all I'm capable of doing.
I used to have a neurosis about not learning lines
and not being able to remember texts.
One of my actor's nightmares is to show up
and not know the lines.
So maybe I overcompensate, but I find that by learning it,
it gives me a sense of ease and confidence
to walk on the set or the stage of wherever I'm doing,
and know that I know, that I know how to do it.
(dramatic music)
Well, that was a very confined movie to be on
because Francis Ford Coppola,
brilliant director as he is, he's a great controller.
He controls everything.
So you don't get much choice.
And I fought for my choice to make Van Helsing
like an insane madman,
wanted him to be this uproarious rebel,
and seer, and bad man.
I had a scar, he fought a duel and all that stuff.
And so I concocted it myself, I don't know how it came out.
Jesus, God, I command you in the name of Christ!
(screams)
(horses neighing)
No!
And I had to take out some rather (indistinct)
- [Narrator] In 1992, there's a change of scenery
and a decisive encounter in Anthony Hopkins career.
He joins the filming of Howards End,
a period film directed by James Ivory.
This film will mark the beginning of their collaboration,
which will continue with The Remains of the Day,
and Surviving Picasso.
- [Hopkins Voiceover] That's what I like
about working in film.
You just go along with it.
The more relaxed you are, I think the easier it is.
And I like it this way because it's effortless.
I learn the lines very very well, and very methodically.
So that I can improvise,
and make them sound real on each take.
- [Crew Member] Scene 59F, Take 1.
- So I don't have that sweat or that tension,
by not knowing the lines.
My relationship to directors has changed.
I used to fight them, now I don't.
I think that they do the best they can,
and I do the best I can.
We seem to get on fine now,
which is a great new change for me.
My dear Helen, I grieve for your clerk.
I really do.
But it is all part of the battle of life.
- The battle of life?
- Yes.
- [Helen] A man who had little money, has less.
Owing to us.
- Oh come, come.
Anyway, you're not to blame.
No one is to blame.
- No one?
Oh is no one to blame for it?
- I didn't say that.
You take things far too seriously.
My dear Helen, I grieve for your clerk.
I really do.
But it is all part of the battle of life.
- The battle of life?
- [Hopkins] Yes.
- A man who had little money, has less.
Owing to us.
- Oh come, come.
You're not to blame.
No one is to blame.
- No one?
Is no one to blame for anything?
- I didn't say that.
You take things far too seriously.
- How did you get a handle on the character
you played in that?
- It was the mustache did it.
- Oh?
- Yeah.
So I went to the makeup room and they said,
"Would you wear a mustache in this?"
I said, "Well, I haven't grown one, no."
She said, "Well, I've got one for you."
I said, "Okay, well let's put it on."
I put it on, and I said, "There's the man."
And it made me feel like my grandfather,
my father's father, he was a strict Victorian.
And I looked in the mirror, and I thought, "That's him."
And it did something to my eyes,
it did something to my face,
it give it a sort of edge.
And it made my eyes stand out.
I thought this man is a ruthless man,
and he's a tough man,
and I could see him in the dark suit.
So I didn't have to do much work on top of that.
There is Henry Wilcox.
(indistinct) Henry.
I call it the mask, and it doesn't even have to be makeup.
It can be a pair of shoes, or it can be a jacket.
And I remember Remains of the Day,
my first day was wearing a rain coat.
Because it was raining, and getting into a car,
and then turning up on the location,
and I looked in the mirror and it was my own grandfather
looking back at me.
He used to wear a coat like that and a green felt hat.
And I looked, and I thought, "That's him,"
and I felt everything transform inside me slightly,
and it all came to life.
(dramatic music)
You must take good care of yourself Mrs. Benn.
- You too, Mr. Stevens, promise me that.
- Oh yes, I promise.
You must try to do all you can
to make these years happy ones
for yourself and for your husband.
I don't know why I play those repressed men.
Maybe I am like that, I don't know.
I'm pretty shy.
I'm not very gregarious.
I'm not gregarious at all really, I have very few friends,
but I'm happy in my way.
I like to be on my own a lot.
I'm married, and have a wife, and a few friends,
but I prefer my own company most of the time.
So maybe that's why they cast me in these strange parts.
- [Narrator] Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson reunite
in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day,
a year after Howards End.
In this film, they play a butler and a housekeeper
caught in a silent, romantic relationship
subject to the weight of conventions.
Here, Hopkins slips into the skin of the most introverted,
subtle, and almost ghostly character of his career.
- I'm invading your private time. Am I?
- Yes.
- What's in that book?
Come on, let me see.
(ominous music)
Or are you protecting me?
Is that what you're doing?
(mysterious music)
Would I be shocked?
- Anthony Hopkins is the perfect repressed
English gentleman, because he has all the niceties
on the outside, you know?
He knows how to be presentable,
and how to bring tea properly,
and yet you never feel a coldness.
You always feel that underneath,
there's this terrifically warm, big, beautiful heart
that yearns to come out.
And that's when those movies really work,
when those very sort of prissy English characters
aren't just what they are on the outside,
but that you can intuit
that inside is somebody who's really yearning
to get beyond this Victorian repression.
- I read these books.
Any books to develop my command
and knowledge of the English language.
I read to further my education, Miss Kenton.
(dramatic music)
- But there were a few things you do in Howards End,
which struck me as being not only brilliant,
and very moving,
but also, I can't imagine they were in the script.
In particular, the character you play, Mr. Wilcox.
- Yeah.
- There are two events in the movie when he's talking
about something shameful in his past,
and both times he does not wish to be looked upon.
He doesn't want to make eye contact with his wife.
He kind of hides his face away.
Do you remember those ones?
- Oh, I did that.
- Yeah.
- So you were that woman's lover?
- To put it with your usual delicacy, yes, I was.
- When?
When, please?
- 10 years ago!
(heavy sigh)
I'm sorry, 10 years ago.
I don't know, maybe I'd seen it in a movie somewhere.
I think Charles Laughton did it in Hunchback of Notre Dame
or something, he hid his face.
It may have been...
Yeah, I think it was that.
Maybe I stole it.
It's a good piece to steal.
(interviewer laughs)
He's, "How ugly I am," and he put his...
I think I stole that.
- [Interviewer] It's a wonderful moment,
and it really breaks through as well because-
- [Hopkins] Oh, and then he breaks down doesn't he,
at the end?
- [Interviewer] At the end he does, yeah.
- [Hopkins] He couldn't bear to be seen crying.
Yes, showing of emotion.
(crying)
I'm sorry.
I think that's why I have a lot in common
with these characters.
I don't like bearing emotion much.
Maybe it's a British thing, maybe it's a male thing.
But I don't like it.
I don't like displays of tears and, you know.
(upbeat jazz music)
- But I don't feel like an actor.
I don't know what the hell an actor is.
I feel like I'm a member of the circus most of the time.
You travel around the world.
You travel around, you arrive in cities,
and arrive on locations, do the job and then go home.
As I get older, I just feel that's all I do is a job.
It's nothing more, nothing less.
It happens to be well-paid and it's public.
And I have my father's attitude.
It's like my father is inside me now.
The more I see photographs of myself sometimes,
and I look just like my father.
And he's alive and well in me, I think.
I have his attitudes, his values, and all the rest of it.
He had a tough life
and I've had a very easy life, comparatively.
Actually, I have a very easy life, period.
I'm just one of those very fortunate ones.
(car engine roaring)
(slow jazz music)
I tend to be very unpredictable and moody.
See, I go into a situation and say, "Oh hi there. Mm-hmm."
You know, I want to be liked.
So I go into a movie set or to a new play,
whatever, and I'm Mr. Friendly, Mr. Nice guy
because I want to be liked.
I want to be pleasant to everyone.
And then suddenly somebody steps on my toes,
and I go off like a firecracker.
- Got to see him on a couple of cranky days,
when Sir Tony would turn cranky
and that was good fun, very entertaining.
And I'm telling you when Tony's cranky,
the Red Sea parts.
In fact, forget Moses, if I was casting God,
I would cast Sir Tony.
Sir Anthony Hopkins, because he has a force.
(dramatic music)
- [Hopkins Voiceover] It's a romantic fantasy
I have of the loner, the lone wolf who...
the lone person who doesn't need any affection.
That's part of my life, actually.
I think I can do very well without affection and love.
It doesn't bode well for a good life, a full life,
but I am capable of withdrawing from people
and closing myself off.
Maybe it's a form of martyrdom.
(gentle music)
I used to turn savagely on people.
I'd get rid of people, get rid of friends
and they'd wonder what had happened.
And then recently, over the last year, I guess,
something changed in me,
and I thought life's too short to do all this.
I have a few friends,
and I'm very lucky to have them in my life.
Really lucky.
Because they see me walking straight into the jaws of hell,
because I am naive.
I am easily taken in by people,
and that's my main fault, I guess.
My main defect is that I'm very naive.
I'm told that I have a nature which is complex.
I don't feel complex actually, I feel quite a simpleton.
(soft piano music)
- [Narrator] Anthony Hopkins grew up thinking
he wasn't worth much.
A withdrawn child without any particular talent.
In Port Talbot, Wales, people called him, "Dumbo".
Although he never intended to get revenge,
he manages to find a place in a Hollywood
that likes to pigeonhole its actors.
He draws his strength and talent
from not fitting into any mold.
(soft piano music)
He proves it again, when Oliver Stone,
against all expectations chooses him,
the most English actor in Hollywood
to play the typical American by changing again.
But this time, in the role of President Nixon.
(ominous music)
- He was scared shitless
because, "How can I be Nixon?
They're going to see me as a fraud."
You're Welsh, you're not English.
You're Welsh, there's a big difference.
And I said, "You're halfway there already.
You're in the Atlantic anyway.
You're not far."
I said, "There's something in your spirit,
which is obstinate, stubborn,
and yet has a great misunderstood quality."
- I've got to keep fighting, Buddy, for the country.
These people running things, the elite.
They're just soft chicken-shit faggots.
They don't have the long-term vision anymore.
They just want to cover their ass, and meet girls,
and tear each other down.
Oh God, this country's in deep, deep, deep trouble, Buddy.
Got into the psychology of the man.
I understood his paranoia.
I understood his loneliness, his terrors,
his bleakness of life, and the lies he told.
He was caught in a morass of such lies.
And I felt sorry for him because he was always the outsider.
(dramatic orchestra music)
When they look at you, they see what they want to be.
When they look at me, they see what they are.
Well I had no illusions I was going to be Cary Grant
or Robert Redford.
And any moment that they tried to do something like that
or someone said, "This is a..."
That sort of part to give me,
I knew I was what they would call a "character actor."
Bly, I was always very chunky.
I'm not a leading man actor.
I'm not Brad Pitt, or Robert Redford, or Tom Cruise.
Those are leading movie stars.
I'm not a movie star, I'm a movie actor.
- [Narrator] And it's in Meet Joe Black in 1998,
that the actor completely changes his register.
Playing a billionaire at the end of his life,
opposite Brad Pitt, who incarnates death
coming to take him on his last trip.
- The question.
(ominous music)
- Am I going to die?
(ominous music)
(footsteps walking)
- Yes.
- [Narrator] This is the second time that the two actors
meet on a movie set, four years after starring together
in Legends of the Fall.
There isn't an actor on one side and a star on the other,
but rather two generations that mirror each other.
Their duo makes this film,
which is often underestimated by critics,
an astonishing allegory on life and death.
(upbeat piano music)
- Who am I?
- Death.
- How would I want to be remembered?
I certainly don't want any longer to be remembered
as that nice guy, you know?
The guy who does the Tommy Cooper jokes anymore.
I don't want to be that anymore.
I don't really give a damn.
(upbeat classical music)
Should I be afraid?
- Not a man like you.
(upbeat music)
- [Crew Member] We should bring in a better light.
- [Narrator] In 2001, he returns to the cell
that made him an icon.
10 years after The Silence of The Lambs,
Anthony Hopkins puts on the Hannibal Lecter mask again,
and plays in the two other films in the trilogy,
Hannibal and Red Dragon.
- I did have some misgivings about doing this third one
because I thought, "Well I've done it now.
So I can't get any more mileage out of it,"
because it becomes boring and tedious.
And I thought, "Well, it wouldn't harm to do one more,"
as long as I'm more of a background figure, I think.
More of a shadowy figure.
I can't go on hitting the bullseye all the time.
You're going to make some bad films,
and I made a number of bad films.
I made probably on one hand, maybe four good films.
Most of the ones have been mediocre.
(camera clicking)
I am a terrible liar, you see, I'll tell my agent,
"Yeah, I've read the script."
And then I wake up after they've committed me
and I say, "God almighty."
I did that recently on the thing called Bad Company.
I thought, "What the hell have I done this for?"
But I tend to do that because I'm stupid,
or greedy, or impatient.
And I think if I don't say, "Yes,"
they'll give it to somebody else.
(laughs)
Those are my motives.
That's what a refined actor I am,
how I've planned my career.
- [Narrator] Anthony Hopkins spends the 2000s
moving from set to set.
He has a series of blockbusters,
such as Thor and Transformers,
but he returns to what he does best
in the biopic Hitchcock,
in which he brings the famous English suspense genius,
Sir Alfred Hitchcock to life.
The film highlights the influence of his wife, Alma,
played by Helen Mirren, on the master's work.
- Just think of the shock value.
Killing off your leading lady halfway through.
I mean you are intrigued, are you not my dear?
Come on, admit it.
Admit it.
- Actually I think it's a huge mistake.
(dramatic music)
You shouldn't wait until halfway through,
kill her off after 30 minutes.
(crunching food)
- Well.
- [Narrator] Fortunately, Hitchcock listened to his wife
and killed his heroin after more than 30 minutes.
Today, the shower scene is recognized as a classic.
- More, more!
- No.
- Use some guts!
(screaming)
- C'mon!
- Ow, ow.
- No, more anger!
- Ow.
- All right, cut, cut, cut!
For god's sake, would someone get me a proper stunt double?
Now give me the knife.
Like this!
(screams)
Ungovernable rage!
(screams)
Homicidal violence!
- You've never really done anything
as good as Psycho, have you?
- Psycho?
(laughs)
Should I tell you that story?
Yeah, somebody asked me for my autograph once,
and I went up and signed this autograph
and she said, "You don't look anything
like you did in Psycho."
- Is it in just the name, Hopkins, Perkins?
- Hopkins, Perkins, I think they get...
I promise you, I was down in Bristol.
I was filming with Lesley Ann Down.
The assistant director said, "The station master's wife
would love to see you.
She's a great fan of yours."
I said, "Oh, show me the way."
So, we went in and I thought, "Well, where is she?"
And she said, "Oh, you don't look
anything like you did in Psycho."
(audience laughs)
So, I ripped her curtains off
and stabbed her with my biro.
(audience laughs)
- You signed the name Anthony Perkins.
- That's right.
(audience laughs)
(dramatic music)
- So anyone who says "It's lonely at the top,"
either needs a good psychiatrist or a kick in the ass.
It's nice being successful.
It's good.
It's very, very good.
Fucking good, yeah.
I enjoy it.
I have a good life.
I have a lot of fun, no regrets, no complaints.
If it all ended tomorrow, so be it.
I've had a good time.
(dramatic music)
I was very surprised by the knighthood.
Very, very surprised, very honored.
I didn't know what had...
My wife phoned me up while I was down in Bath,
doing Remains of the Day.
She phoned me, she said, "You've been given a knighthood."
I said, "What for?"
She said, "I don't know."
And I said, I didn't know.
I was quite speechless for many days.
Of course, I was sworn to secrecy.
You're not supposed to tell anyone.
But it was, I mean, it's a great honor
and I try to wear it as comfortably as I can.
If people call me Mr. Hopkins instead of Sir Anthony,
I don't have a conniption fit.
I'm very happy with what everyone,
In America, they say "Sir Hopkins."
Oh, I say, "Just call me Tony,"
because they get it all wrong there.
But it's very, very, very nice.
(somber piano music)
- I've been asked to write a biography, an autobiography,
and I haven't a clue, and I keep doing it,
and I keep deleting it all from the computer.
Because I look at it,
and I thought, "What am I writing all this stuff for?"
Because I don't want to go back to the past.
I don't want to go back and examine my childhood.
I had a perfectly fine childhood.
I had a confused school career, but that was all,
I mean nothing really untoward has happened to me.
I drank a bit too much, stopped doing that,
and then my life really started to take flower then.
I get out in the morning, out of bed,
and you know, I'm getting old.
And as I get out of bed, "Oh, dear God, right move!"
I get up, and I think, "Right. I'm alive.
Life's in Session. It's not a rehearsal. Move,"
and that's what I do.
(somber piano music)
And now I can make some bad films,
and it doesn't matter anymore.
I don't have to prove it.
It's like all those little doubts
that started way back when I was a child.
It's like a voice inside me says,
"See you weren't that dumb. You were just different."
(audience laughs and applauds)
(upbeat music)