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A Chilling Chat with Anthony Hopkins about "Hannibal", pour le site web Zap2it, 06/2/2001.

A Gentleman’s game, Brentwood Magazine , 01/12/2001.

In Sync with Anthony Hopkins and 'Hearts in Atlantis', pour le site web Zap2it , 26/9/2001.

Titre : A Chilling Chat with Anthony Hopkins about "Hannibal"
Auteur : Prairie Miller
Date : 06/2/2001
Journal : pour le site web Zap2it
 
It is a damp and chilly early Sunday morning at a New York City hotel, as anxious journalists mill about restlessly, awaiting the arrival of the brainy and elegant Dean-of-Onscreen-Serial-Killers, Anthony Hopkins.

Media carnivores and vegetarians alike breathlessly and eagerly anticipate his arrival, as if a perverse head of state from some distant region in hell were about to enter.

Hopkins does not keep anyone waiting. He struts in punctually at the appointed time in unassuming head-to-toe black attire, seemingly wishing to be shorn of all previous personas.

Today he is simply Anthony Hopkins, and he has had enough of all the rest. He is neither impressed nor amused by the adulation that greets him. He is merely jaded and dismissive of it all.

Today Anthony Hopkins is just the son of a humble Welsh baker.

"My father was a very grounded, meat and potatoes kind of man," says Hopkins, explaining why his attitude about acting is so blue collar, as if it's just a job where one might arrive on the set with a lunch bucket in hand. "My father died some years ago. He was my mentor."

His feelings for other father figures - like filmmakers - are less enthusiastic. Not counting, however, Hannibal director Ridley Scott.

"I've worked with so-called geniuses, artists. And they're a nightmare. They're dull and deadly, and they suck all the life out of a film," Hopkins confides. "But Ridley is a director who comes along and just does his job. That to me is a genius, that's good."

"Directors that I've worked with like Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg on Amistad, they don't want to get caught up in all the claptrap," he says.

"They don't want to discuss things endlessly for hours, about the arc of a part, or the metaphor of it. You would think they're talking about something really important, like dissecting a brain or something. Or finding a cure for a disease. It's not, it's about acting."

For Hopkins it may seem like just a job, but what is going through his mind when audiences react to him as Hannibal with a nearly mystical reverence?

"I feel very weird, sitting here again talking about Hannibal," he reflects. "But it all came to fruition. It's all like a bit of a dream, though."

Does Hopkins get recognized in public more as Hannibal Lecter or the actor just doing his job?

"Well, I was in a motel in the state of Washington, and this elderly lady was staring at me," Hopkins recalls. "She came over and said, what are you doing here? And I said, well what are you doing here? Then she said, I can't believe you're here, Hannibal Lecter."

The next immediate thought is if he is worried at all that he will become as indistinguishable from Hannibal as Bela Lugosi was from Dracula, in spite of an enormous range of talent in the case of both actors.

"I don't care one way or the other. If they do, they do," Hopkins replies, lapsing back into his Welsh baker mode. "These things don't concern me at all, because none of these are up to me. I'm not concerned how people remember me."

But what about that body of work that actors are anxious about leaving behind? Hopkins pretends to fall asleep, and snores loudly!

"Body of work, ugh," he laughs. "Acting isn't brain surgery. It's not curing diseases, it's a movie. It's nothing, it's absolutely nothing. It's meaningless."

And Hopkins reports that it was effortless slipping back into Hannibal's skin, even though it's been a decade since The Silence Of The Lambs struck such terror in the hearts of viewers worldwide. After eluding his hunter, FBI agent Clarice Starling for so long and surfacing in Florence as museum curator Dr. Fell, Hopkins feels that Hannibal has only changed in that he's "10 years older, and a little more world weary."

When remarking that Hannibal seems a bit more humorous too, a delighted Hopkins responds a little devilishly, "Goody, goody!"

Humor also oddly prevailed on the set of this still very gory thriller follow-up.

An unbilled and unrecognizable Gary Oldman who plays Mason Verger, a billionaire drugged by Dr. Lecter and encouraged by him to tear off his own face, had nothing but playful affection for Hopkins, even though on camera he is obsessed with revenge.
"I call him Sir Anthony!," says Oldman, admonishingly. "Well, we're both naughty, Tony and I. We're cut from the same cloth. He rebukes and corrects me. No, we laugh and joke, and have a good time. We do impersonations of each other. I do impersonations of him, and he says, 'Go on, do me.' And we have a good time."

The two men, known for their spooky characters, say they giggled a lot on the set. Oldman admits, "I've know him a long time. So it was great, we just had a good laugh, a lot of laughs on this picture. We did giggle. And I made myself giggle, just riding around in that wheelchair thing. Like you just suddenly go, this is ridiculous. You just suddenly step outside of yourself. And I would say, it's not too much for you, is it darling?"

Julianne Moore, in addition to getting cast in the unenviable role of trying to catch the stubbornly elusive Hannibal, is also stuck with the burden of filling Jodie Foster's shoes this time around.

She did though, manage to grab a little comic relief on set when it came to the subject of filling shoes, specifically around scenes where Hopkins relaxes in his villa, wandering about barefoot.

"It was funny when I saw the movie," recalls Moore. "I turned to my manager and said, he’s really scary. I’d forgotten all about that, because I’m very used to him, especially in those scenes where he’s walking around with no shoes on and he puts on those gloves."

She pauses as she reflects, "Anthony is so outrageously talented, he’s really down to earth. He is such a great guy. God, it relaxes you to work with someone like that, because he’s so present and available. But he’s probably a little more social now, since we worked on Saving Picasso. I always tease him, because everyone in Paris on the set was going, Tony, he’s way over there in the corner. So on Hannibal, he seemed to have gotten a little more social in those five years. I used to say to him, God, go out or something."

Then how does such a shy, likable guy project such creepiness as Hannibal?

"He’s just a tremendously talented person, and he’s able to do whatever he wants to do," says Juliannne. "That’s really what it is."

Giancarlo Giannini, who plays the Florence detective who gets wise to Hannibal and even deludes himself into believing that he's a match for the unbeatable master of mayhem, was more to the point in assessing Hopkins.

"He's a fascinating actor, otherwise he'd just be an ordinary cannibal eating a body part out of the refrigerator," Giannini reflects on his co-star's magic formula. "Anthony made Hannibal not only charming, but diabolical."

"But it was very easy to work with him, because we both have similar approaches," says Giannini. "I immediately entered into Inspector Pazzi, and Anthony immediately entered into Hannibal Lecter. And he could be attacking me one minute, and the next minute we could be joking and laughing."

Hannibal producer Dino De Laurentiis had an equally immediate rapport with Hopkins, and the fact that the great icebreaker was food had absolutely nothing to do with the elegant butcher's unusual appetites.

"You know, I am great cook," says De Laurentiis. "He loves Italian food. So I made him some spaghetti."

Ray Liotta grabbed at the chance to star with Hopkins, even if he had to serve as a literal glutton for punishment, doing a D.C. cop hot on Hannibal's trail.

"To work with Anthony Hopkins playing this part, it’s like working with Scorsese doing a Mafia movie. It's his forte," Liotta says.

"Then when I realized he was going to be doing that stuff to me, that really made it, I said, how cool! Like what could be better than that?" Liotta beams. "Then all of a sudden the reality comes in and I'm thinking, how are we actually going to do this? I decided that the happy medication he gives me would....help out a lot!"

With it now obvious that Hopkins is pretty much a pussycat in real life and doesn't frighten anybody, is there anything that terrifies him?

"Yeah, absolutely," Hopkins readily admits. "I love a scary movie. Like Hitchcock. Or watching cliffhangers, like The Fugitive. And you do sit there, and it makes your toes curl. But it's not you going through it. Just like you might think it would be amusing to have lunch with Hannibal Lecter, as long as you're not the lunch! Because he's cultured, witty, clever, and all that."

Hopkins also has a few hunches of his own about what scares people, and why he can be so scary himself when he's hardly trying.

"It's the same reason people go on roller coasters. It's like a close brush with death, or whatever. I mean, that's pretty scary, going on a roller coaster," says Hopkins. "And they all come off laughing. Now what is the psychological need there? It's like watching young animals like puppies and kittens playing and wrestling, it's a struggle to survive."

"It's all a game, and that's what we are," says Hopkins. "We're game players, and we are still children inside. People always ask me why I've played Hannibal. And I say, I don't know. If I supply a need for that in this particular role, so be it."