Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony

I like to be center stage

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.

- 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!

Mina!

- The thing is going to happen pretty fast.

- Yes. - You confront them,

they attack you,

Van Helsing challenges you,

you make your lay statement and then you leave.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

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.

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.

I love the coldness of life.

I love the inevitability of it all.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

- 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."

- 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.