Anthony Hopkins’ least favourite things about modern movies: “I try to watch these films and I’m so bored”
For someone who’s dedicated their life to acting on film, television, and the stage and become a legend in doing so, Anthony Hopkins has always maintained a fractious relationship with his chosen vocation.
As far back as the 1960s, when he was still learning under the tutelage of Laurence Olivier, Hopkins was caught in two minds about his path. The classically trained thespian admitted that as much as he loved acting, he hated actors just as much, if not even more, and he was fully aware of the irony of his situation.
Admittedly, matters weren’t helped by the fact he was an alcoholic for the better part of his career’s first two decades, but even when he permanently ditched the drink in the mid-1970s, he remained unconvinced that anyone who made their living dressing up and pretending to be something they weren’t was anything but a highly-paid conman.
That duality is probably what’s kept Hopkins at the top of his game for so long, and it was summed up perfectly by his 21st-century renaissance. The veteran conceded that even though his contributions to Marvel’s Thor franchise required him to do absolutely no acting, the opening chapter in the superhero saga nonetheless rejuvenated him when he was in danger of committing to autopilot full-time.
Since then, Hopkins has been on a tear, as evidenced by his second Academy Award win for The Father, which made him the oldest performer to ever win a competitive Oscar. Of course, he hasn’t shied away from taking the money and running during his late-stage second wind, which again means there’s irony to be found in his criticisms of modern cinema.
“You watch a film, and you don’t know who’s chasing who in a car scene. I can’t watch it,” he ranted to Variety. “I try to watch these films, and I’m so bored. Who cares? They have sex. Give me a break! I wasn’t born yesterday. And these car chases. God almighty! It’s too much. It’s so boring.”
Yes, the Anthony Hopkins who laments frantically edited action sequences, vehicular chaos, and sex is the same Anthony Hopkins who was blown up by an alien robot in Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, voiced an alien robot in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, and played the title character in Freud’s Last Session.
It wasn’t just the movies he didn’t care for, either, but the on-camera talents he felt were talking too quietly and projecting too much confidence for his liking. “Everyone talks in a whisper now because it sounds sexy,” the tirade continued. “It doesn’t sound sexy. You can’t hear! I’m just an old Grinch. You watch, and you can see the attitude of the actor. They think, ‘I am hot shit.'”
Clearly, Hopkins does not believe the next generation of actors to be hot shit, and he would know, seeing as his list of accolades has illustrated that he is, in fact, hot shit in terms of pure talent and legacy.
