The “boring” role that swore Anthony Hopkins off the stage for good: “Categorically never”
Anthony Hopkins used to have no trouble stepping onto the stage, launching his career with roles in productions like Julius Caesar and As You Like It before eventually graduating to the silver screen.
Once Hopkins got used to the method of acting in films, he suddenly realised that he was never really meant for theatre, even if he was rather good at it. Those years of studying Shakespeare and cycling through various productions at The Old Vic proved to be vital in setting him up for an excellent career; he just came to prefer the freedom of being a Hollywood star.
Theatre was no longer appealing with its long rehearsal hours, and days on end of performing the same scripts in the same costumes rendered him indescribably bored.
Talking to Desert News in the 1990s, he once admitted that film acting is “dead easy”, while theatre is “just a lot of work”. While it would be unfair to call acting in front of a camera an easy profession, especially for those who undergo full bodily transformations for their roles, Hopkins seems to see the process as much less strenuous than having to repeat the same dialogue every single night for God knows how long.
He doubled down on his distaste for theatre, explaining how one production in particular was enough to put him off for good. “I will never go back to the stage, categorically never. It’s boring and repetitious. Antony and Cleopatra finished me. It burned out any desire to be significant or anything like that. I’ve done all that stuff. I wanted to be a great stage actor, but all my desire for that is gone. I don’t even go to the theatre anymore.”
It’s a shame that he lost his spark for theatre, but at least he transferred it to the silver screen. The actor has enjoyed an impressive career as an Oscar-winning star, having starred in some terrific pieces of cinema that suggest that he made the right choice in abandoning the stage. The Elephant Man, The Remains of the Day, The Silence of the Lambs, we might not have got these performances if Hopkins hadn’t got sick of the playhouse.
Following 1989’s M Butterfly, which came two years after his disastrous experience of Antony and Cleopatra, Hopkins has pretty much stuck to his word and hasn’t appeared on the stage since, aside from lending his voice to the narration of 2022’s Awakening run of shows in Las Vegas. So, if you’ve ever hoped to catch Hopkins in the flesh, your chances are slim, because if he’s not working on a new film, you’re not going to find him on the stage; he’ll probably be at home watching TV.
