Anthony Hopkins “distrusts” the idea of viewing acting as art
Coming from a small Welsh district to the pinnacle of Hollywood through his appearances on both stage and screen, Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of the UK’s most prolific and most powerful actors. He has received a total of 21 award nominations to date, and currently, he holds the world record for the oldest recipient of the Academy Award for ‘Best Leading Actor’ in celebration of his work in Florian Zeller’s brilliant feature film The Father.
Hopkins has cemented himself in the industry through his careful preparation for his many diverse roles, an approach he is now renowned for. The actor has reportedly gone over his lines up to 200 times during filming, only breaking the ritual if specific words come organically to him in the moment. Hopkins prefers the directors he works with to stay aligned with the script, meeting any deviation or editing with a stern objection.
The Silence of the Lambs star discussed his acting style and standpoints during an interview with TheTalks, sharing that “most of my last 30 years have been (dream-like)” due to his hard work and passion. “Results and manifestations of things I’d dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man,” Hopkins shares. “I realised it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, ‘This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I’d pictured it.’”
He adds: “My whole life has been like that, and I’m fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go”.
This concept of creation as a source of power, held by actors as physical creators of a written figure, alludes to art form status within acting, something that can be free-flowing and spontaneous. However, as previously mentioned, Hopkins prefers to perceive acting with routine, meticulous precision and tunnel vision, diverting from ideas of creative spurts.
Instead, the actor voices an oppositional, or at least hesitant, stance towards citing film performances as artworks and actors as artists. “Well, I always distrust the word art when it is applied to acting,” he explains. “I’ve always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn’t believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical.”
However, Hopkins considers that taking a character from a script and layering them with emotions, objectives and thoughts as called for by the narrative echoes aspects of creativity. “But I guess it is a creative process; acting is a creative process and directing and music,” the star shared. “I think creative people – and I take myself as a creative person, and it doesn’t mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter.”
“But I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business, you do have a heightened awareness,” he adds as a conclusion. “It doesn’t make you special, though.”
