The director Anthony Hopkins called a “genius”
As one of Britain’s most beloved and prolific actors, Anthony Hopkins has led a career of unparalleled consistency. Like many of his celebrated peers, Hopkins cut his teeth in the Royal National Theatre, satiating his deep passion for Shakespeare, especially enjoying a production of King Lear, his favourite play by the Bard of Avon.
Hopkins remained heavily involved in theatre until the late 1980s and won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award in ’85 for his performance in the David Hare play Pravda. The honour was doubtlessly made all the more touching in the knowledge that Hopkins was first recognised and brought into the National Theatre by Olivier himself.
Hopkins’ major movie breakthrough came in the early 1990s when he won the ‘Best Actor’ Academy Award for his iconic, horrifying performance as Hannibal Lecter. He had previously enjoyed acclaimed roles in The Lion in Winter, A Bridge Too Far, and The Elephant Man.
Following his first Academy Award win, Hopkins’ movie career ran on kerosene with a dense swathe of blockbusters through the 1990s and into the new millennium. In more recent years, an outstanding performance in Florian Zeller’s The Father in 2020 earned Hopkins the distinction of becoming the oldest ‘Best Actor’ Academy Award winner to date, as he swiped his second trophy.
The 85-year-old remains active today and sits proudly atop a watertight oeuvre. His unique talent has led to collaborations with some of the greatest filmmakers of his time, including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone, leaving Martin Scorsese as perhaps the one who got away.
As a director and producer in his own right, Hopkins knows a thing or two about adapting a screenplay into a blockbusting triumph. Speaking to Yahoo at CinemaCon in 2017, Hopkins discussed his then-new role in Transformers: The Last Knight, praising its director, Michael Bay, as a “genius” on par with the all-time greats.
“All those machines and those Transformers are created by Michael,” he said. “And he was telling me about the work he did on them – how he would refine them and go into the special effects guys and design them and get all the details of light on metal and all that.”
“He told me all that at breakfast before I started on the film,” Hopkins added with an air of astonishment. “I thought, ‘This guy’s a genius. He really is.’ He’s the same ilk as Oliver Stone, Spielberg and Scorsese. Brilliance. Savants, really, they are. He’s a savant.”
Beyond his prominent work in the Transformers franchise, Bay is famed for classic action movies such as Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon and Pearl Harbour. Although his movies follow the high-octane action thread, which isn’t typically associated with Academy Awards and critical praise, Bay’s knack for turning out appealing high-budget blockbusters has made him one of history’s most commercially successful filmmakers.
