Sir Anthony Hopkins
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Posted by Gus Leous in Arts section |
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Born on December 31, 1937, as the only son of a baker, Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins was drawn to the theater while attending the YMCA at age 17, and later learned the basics of his craft at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1960, Hopkins made his stage bow in The Quare Fellow, and then spent four years in regional repertory before his first London success in Julius Caesar.
Combining the best elements of the British theater's classic heritage and its burgeoning "angry young man" school, Hopkins worked well in both ancient and modern pieces. His film debut was not, as has often been cited, his appearance as Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter (1968), but in an odd, "pop art trendy" film, The White Bus (1967).
Though already familiar to some sharp-eyed American viewers after his film performance as Lloyd George in Young Winston (1971), Hopkins burst full-flower onto the American scene in 1974 as an ex-Nazi doctor in QB VII, the first television miniseries.
Also in 1974, Hopkins made his Broadway debut in Equus, eventually directing the 1977 Los Angeles production. The actor became typed in intense, neurotic roles for the next several years: in films he portrayed the obsessed father of a girl whose soul has been transferred into the body of another child in Audrey Rose (1976), an off-the-wall ventriloquist in Magic (1978), and the much-maligned Captain Bligh (opposite Mel Gibson’s Fletcher Christian) in Bounty (1982).
On TV, Hopkins played roles as varied (yet somehow intertwined) as Adolph Hitler, accused Lindbergh-baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In 1991, Hopkins won an Academy Award for his bloodcurdling portrayal of murderer Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. With the aplomb of a thorough professional, Anthony Hopkins was able to follow-up his chilling Lecter with characters of great kindness, courtesy, and humanity: the conscience-stricken butler of a British fascist in The Remains of the Day (1992) and compassionate author C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands (1993).
In 1995, Hopkins earned considerable acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his uncanny interpretation (done without elaborate makeup) of President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone’s Nixon. After his performance as Pablo Picasso in James Ivory’s Surviving Picasso (1996), Hopkins garnered another Oscar nomination—this time for Best Supporting Actor—the following year for his work in Steven Spielberg’s slavery epic Amistad.
Following this honor, Hopkins chose roles that cast him as a father figure, first in the ploddingly long Meet Joe Black and then in the have-mask-will-swashbuckler Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas and fellow countrywoman Catherine Zeta-Jones. In his next film, 1999’s Instinct, Hopkins again played a father, albeit one of a decidedly different stripe. As anthropologist Ethan Powell, Hopkins takes his field work with gorillas a little too seriously, reverting back to his animal instincts, killing a couple of people, and alienating his daughter (Maura Tierney) in the process.
Hopkins kept a low profile in 2000, providing narration for Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and voicing the commands overheard by Tom Cruise’s special agent in John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2. In 2001, Hopkins returned to the screen to reprise his role as the effete, erudite, eponymous cannibal in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, the long-anticipated sequel to Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991).
The 160-million-dollar blockbuster did much for Hopkins’ bank account but little for his standing with the critics, who by and large found Hannibal to be a stylish, gory exercise in illogical tedium. Worse yet, some wags suggested that the actor would have been better off had he followed his Silence co-star Jodie Foster’s lead and opted out of the sequel altogether.
And though Hopkins followed that folly with the equally dismissive /action comedy Bad Company (2002), his “third time’s a charm” return to the character of Hannibal Lecter in that same year’s Red Dragon edged closer to the suspense of Silence than the overbloated excess of Hannibal.
Though the story in Red Dragon had been told previously in the 1986 /thriller Manhunter, this retelling, which featured a stellar cast including Edward Norton, Ralph Finnes, Harvey Keitel and Emily Watson, proved a lucrative draw at the box office.
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