“He’s unstoppable”: The Hollywood icon Anthony Hopkins deeply admires
One of the United Kingdom’s greatest-ever actors, Anthony Hopkins has gracefully evolved into the role of an elder statesman, but he hasn’t lost any of his abilities to deliver a knockout performance in between his regular jaunts into mundane genre fare.
After all, he became the oldest winner of an acting Academy Award when his heart-wrenching turn in The Father saw him named the recipient of a ‘Best Actor’ prize at the age of 83. This marked his second time being shortlisted as an octogenarian after he found himself in the running for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ the year before for The Two Popes.
Hopkins evidently hasn’t lost a step after subsequent roles as Nicholas Winton in One Life and Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Last Session were also rapturously received, but he’s also made a point of having a little fun when he’s not required to plumb the emotional and dramatic depths.
He was happy to ham it up and get blown to smithereens by a gigantic alien robot in “genius” Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, brought his solemn gravitas and steely authority to a recurring role as Odin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor franchise, and lend his voice to an android in Zack Snyder’s interminable Rebel Moon duology on Netflix.
Regardless of his awards, accolades, and distinguished decades of treading the boards and shining on the silver screen, though, Hannibal Lecter is always going to be the defining character of Hopkins’ career. He knows it, and he’s also aware he probably shouldn’t have played the cannibalistic psychologist more than once, but he was effectively strongarmed and convinced by Dino De Laurentiis, a producer who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Dino’s irrepressible, he’s unstoppable,” Hopkins said to UPI after sharing how even after Red Dragon, the prolific powerhouse with over 500 credits to his name was trying to talk him into a fourth Lecter flick. “I don’t see any more juice coming out of that character. Three? That’s enough. But people ask me this, so maybe they want to see another one. I can’t go on playing this character. I mean, I can, I suppose. I can, if I put my mind to it.”
De Laurentiis envisioned Lecter as “like James Bond,” so he brazenly ignored Hopkins’ insistence that he was finished with the good doctor. Not only that, but one of the main reasons he ended up being badgered by director Brett Ratner for the prequel in the first place was because “Dino had actually told Brett to try and talk me into doing it” despite his hesitance.
Before his death in November 2010 at the age of 91, De Laurentiis was regarded as one of the most forceful personalities in Hollywood, something Hopkins was already fully aware of but powerful to resist after he ended up agreeing to get into the Hannibal mindset for a third time against his better judgement.
