The director Anthony Hopkins called the greatest of all time: “He did marvellous things”
Sir Anthony Hopkins is Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs—and at least one more Hannibal film, if anyone cares. He won an Oscar for his chilling performance in Lambs and was honoured again by the Academy for his role in 2020’s The Father. Both characters are mentally abnormal, albeit to vastly different degrees. He has a knack for that.
In quintessential Hollywood contrarian fashion, Anthony Hopkins doesn’t believe Silence of the Lambs is his very best work, preferring “Remains Of The Day, Nixon, and The World’s Fastest Indian, not Silence Of The Lambs.” It’s like Shakespeare saying that he thinks Twelfth Night is superior to Hamlet, Byron saying that Hints from Horace is better than Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (which he did actually say).
Dutifully fulfilling his media obligations, as befitting someone who would be knighted in 1993, Hopkins gave an interview with The Purple Diaries about another deranged role that’s lesser known. He played Bruno Hauptmann, the perpetrator of the sinister ‘Lindbergh kidnapping’ in a TV movie, for which he won an Emmy. Another spooky performance, should that appeal to you, and even if he thinks his warm, avuncular performance in The World’s Fastest Indian is more inspired than his more acclaimed roles as the socially maladroit–it’s what he’s known for. We don’t get to choose and determine the gaze of others and how it maps us in their memory.
During the interview, Hopkins also revealed his favourite director. Referring to Bette Davis’ performance in the 1962 horror movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Hopkins says, “He’s got daring. When I saw Baby Jane, I thought, ‘How the hell does she get away with a performance like that. It’s outrageous.’ Yet she gets away with it because she’s got guts” – and you could get the impression that he’s talking about himself. He also compliments Brando, but then again, who hasn’t?
Many consider Brando’s work with Elia Kazan to be “some of the best screen acting of all time, especially when it comes to his performances in Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. To that point, Hopkins agrees, going on to say, “I think that Kazan is probably the greatest director”.
Kazan’s “performer-oriented directing” struck a special chord with the actor, who compared it to “magic”. Hopkins comments with fulsome praise, “Kazan likes to improvise a lot. You look at the things that he did with Brando and James Dean”, continuing after being asked about Dean’s role in 1955’s East of Eden. “In that film, he did marvellous things with Dean. One day, Dean was playing the scene where the Raymond Massey character made him read the Bible.” If you’ve seen the movie (and maybe even if you haven’t), you’ll remember it.
“Don’t read the numbers, Cal,” is as iconic as any line Hopkins has ever delivered and in some ways, his career is remembered through a cartography of memorable quotes. You know them even if you haven’t seen the movies. A great example is, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti,” even if he doesn’t like Silence of the Lambs as much as most people do.
