The “appalling” director Anthony Hopkins couldn’t stand working with: “He’s a fake”
Anthony Hopkins has worked with some of the finest filmmakers in the industry, including David Lynch, who directed him in the moving tale of The Elephant Man, and Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as Van Helsing in the gothic Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Hopkins, it goes without saying, has cemented his place among Hollywood’s elite, giving him the chance to collaborate with some of its most revered figures. Unfortunately, not all of those experiences turned out to be as pleasant as he’d hoped.
That’s not to say that Hopkins hasn’t had many great experiences, of course. He has praised Richard Attenborough in the past, whom he worked with on several films, including A Bridge Too Far and Magic, calling him an “extraordinary” man in his Bafta Fellowship speech. Perhaps when an actor finds a director they click with as well as Hopkins did with Attenborough, it makes the experience of working with someone they consider inferior much less fulfilling.
For Hopkins, there was a filmmaker that he labelled a “fake”, even channelling a bit of Holden Caulfield by calling the director a “phoney”. Surprisingly, the actor was referring to Tony Richardson, the British filmmaker who made some of the country’s most important films during the late 1950s and the 1960s, like Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and Tom Jones.
The latter earned him both ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, at the Oscars, with the film encapsulating the era’s interest in sexual freedom and expanding one’s horizons, with the titular character, played by Albert Finney, setting out to seek his fortune in the world and sleeping with many women as he does so. The film, set in the 18th century, was his second project after Sanctuary not to fit into the kitchen sink drama genre, with Richardson proving he was capable of making films that were much more than just gritty explorations of contemporary Britain.
He also went on to make Mademoiselle with Jeanne Moreau, a psychological drama about a schoolteacher living in a rural French village who goes to extreme lengths to satisfy her repressed sexual desires. It was yet another example of Richardson making ambitious and necessary films, with the filmmaker preoccupied with themes such as poverty, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, gender, and class.
Hopkins worked with the filmmaker in 1969, appearing in his film adaptation of Hamlet, also starring Marianne Faithfull and Judy Parfitt. However, the actor was not impressed by the director at all, holding a belief that goes against Richardson’s reputation as one of Britain’s most important filmmakers. In an interview with The Purple Diaries, Hopkins said, “I’m lucky because I’ve worked with three appalling directors, who shouldn’t be called directors,” then citing Richardson as an example.
He added, “He’s an appalling director! I worked with him on Hamlet with Nicol Williamson.”
When asked why, he added, “He’s a lucky man, because he has his cameraman and….” trailing off without further explanation apart from to say, “Richardson is a phony. He’s a fake.”
We’ll never know exactly why Hopkins hated Richardson so much, but it’s safe to say that the actor never reunited with the filmmaker for another movie again.
