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Liste :
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.
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| Titre : In Sync with Anthony Hopkins and 'Hearts in Atlantis' |
| Auteur : Mike Szymanski |
| Date : 26/9/2001 |
| Journal : pour le site web Zap2it
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HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - Maybe it's frightening to think, but the man who's played Hitler in "The Bunker," (1981) Captain Bligh in "The Bounty" (1981) and man-eating serial killer Hannibal Lecter in both "Silence of the Lambs" (1991) and "Hannibal" (2001) thinks he's perhaps a bit psychic.
"When I was younger, as an acting student, I used to be quite psychic, or so I thought," says Hopkins in an interview with Zap2it.com. "I could see things about people, and have insights and intuitions about them, and they were more often than not quite accurate. But that could be, maybe, a sense of observation which I came into. Then I dropped it. I didn't follow it through because, oh, I don't know."
But Hopkins, now 63, with heavy-lidded pale blue eyes and a nonchalant air about him, isn't as frightening as the characters he's played. He's quick to point out his nicer characters, like the kind doctor of "Elephant Man," (1980) the vampire killer in "Bram Stoker's Dracula," (1992) and the dutiful butler in "Remains of the Day" (1993).
Now, he's more relaxed and in his latest film he plays Ted Brautigan, a loner with psychic abilities who's on the run from the government in the movie "Hearts in Atlantis." And he doesn't care, he says, if it's his last movie.
"I used to be compulsive about working all the time," Hopkins says with a bit of a smirk. "Now, I really don't care if I ever work again, I'm OK with that."
Synchronicity, not psychic ability, is most prevalent in his life right now. "I guess we all have psychic gifts," he says. "I've experienced synchronicity, which isn't quite psychic, I guess, but there are strange phenomena when coincidences are so striking and dramatic. I was in Florence, making a movie, 'Hannibal.' I was sitting by the pool in the hotel. Someone had given me a book by William Goldman, and it was called, What Lie Did I Tell? which was his recent memoir. Then, I went on to another chapter which was about Stephen King and 'Misery' with Kathy Bates."
Hopkins pauses for effect. He's repeated the story before, it seems, and continues, "And I thought, 'I'd like to work with William Goldman again.' So I went on reading the book over coffee and two days later Dino de Laurentis was having a little party in his villa in Florence, and my agent happened to be there from CAA, and in conversation he said, 'By the way, there's a script on its way to you. It'll be here probably tomorrow at your hotel, FedEx. It's a Stephen King story, and the screenplay is by William Goldman.' So I told him, 'Yeah, I'll do it.' I find with synchronicity, the more you think about it, things usually happen."
He felt that synchronicity, too when first meeting 12-year-old Anton Yelchin, who stars as the boy who befriends him and is raised by a single mom, played by Hope Davis.
"When I first met him I thought he looked like Tom Sawyer," Hopkins recalls.
Yelchin remembers, "I was very nervous first meeting Sir Anthony, I knew what a great actor he was even though I wasn't old enough to see many of his movies."
"I got him to stop calling me Sir Anthony pretty quickly and to call me 'Tony,'" Hopkins laughs. "There was a scene we do together in the cafe at the end of the movie, and it was so moving and I asked him 'How do you do it?' "
That's a big compliment coming from a four-time Oscar nominee (winning for "Silence of the Lambs") and winner of many other awards including two Emmys, three BAFTAs (British Academy Awards) and a Best Kiss win this year at the MTV Movie Awards for "Hannibal."
Awards and all that seem unimportant these days, and Hopkins credits that to getting older, saying, "As one gets older, ambitions change. You're very conscious of aging, but not in a morbid way, but in a positive accepting way, It's good to get older."
"Hearts in Atlantis" takes place in 1960, is nostalgic, following actor David Morse as he recalls his childhood and revisits his old neighborhood. It's caused Hopkins to remember his childhood in Wales, how he missed his grandfather when he died, and how he was so excited to get the autograph of Richard Burton after a play.
He's now an American citizen, just this year, and lives in California. He's shaken by the horror of the recent terrorist attacks and doesn't want to talk about how his CIA role in the upcoming "Bad Company" has been delayed. He says he thinks "Hearts" will hit a nerve.
"I saw it with an audience myself in Toronto two weeks ago," he says. "I hadn't seen it before, so I was as detached as I could be, having been in the movie, and especially at the end of it, I was very moved. Yeah, moved, a lump in my throat and all that stuff that I'm not supposed to admit to. I thought the scene with the little girl at the end when she plays her own daughter and David Morse is one of the performers, and the kid, you know, Anton Yelchin, so moved me."
It's a film that takes place at a time before the Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam and the World Trade Center attacks, in a time of innocence. The film is helmed by Oscar-nominated "Shine" director Scott Hicks, who says, "Anthony Hopkins is the most amazing man to work with, he brought up all kinds of memories of his childhood and brought it to his character."
Hopkins admits he's mellowed now. "In
the acting profession, I've tried very hard not to get carried away with myself," Hopkins says. "When you're young, you want to do all the big things, but now I've done a lot of the things I dreamed I would do, and I enjoy it. It's a skill I have, as the guy who lights the set or the director of photography is skilled, or the director is skilled, or the sound engineer. It's a job, nothing more, no big deal."
Now, to make him happy, he watches hummingbirds in his garden, or goes to a nearby deli down the road from his house, or goes on a road trip by himself, driving to Santa Barbara, Santa Fe or Colorado.
"I went into a dark hotel once, and a woman recognized me as Hannibal Lector and screamed," Hopkins deadpans. "It's touching to go into places where people are just doing jobs and recognize me. Sometimes they want photographs taken with me in front of the counter of the desk of the hotel. I travel alone. I live alone. I check into hotels alone. See the countryside. It's lovely."
One of his road trips was with former President Bill Clinton, who invited the man who played "Nixon" with him to Brazil. "He's an extraordinary man, I think he's very much missed in this country," Hopkins sighs. "He's pretty exhausting, to be with because he's always wanting to play cards or golf."
Next, Hopkins is reprising his role as Hannibal the Cannibal in "Red Dragon" with "Rush Hour" director Brett Ratner, but it doesn't start until next year, so he doesn't know much about it. "I'm told that Edward Norton is going to play the other part, and I think that's wonderful. But I don't push my mind that far ahead."
In the meantime, Hopkins enjoys watching movies, even his own movies, as if it were the first time. He says, "You sit there and reach into your popcorn and think, 'Oh, well. I'm a little bit overweight there,' or, 'what happened on that day? Oh, yeah,' and memories come back, but it's all gone, it's all a dream."
And as far as psychic ability, he's still skeptical, but he says, "I'm open-minded. I think anything is possible. I have a saying: 'Nothing is too good to be true, nothing is too wonderful to happen, and nothing is too wonderful to ask,' and that gets me through life. It's best to just go on blissfully."
And, that's simply the way he is.
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