The movie scene that made Anthony Hopkins feel “a little nervous”
As a master of the stage and of the screen, it’s fair to say that Anthony Hopkins has likely seen just about everything there is to see from the acting profession. However, even the greatest actors can still have moments in their careers that they are unsure about and have to rise to the challenge of trying something new for the first time.
Looking back on Hopkins’ career, it seems as though there isn’t a character role that he hasn’t tried at one point or another. For instance, early into his professional life, the Welsh actor performed in a number of Shakespeare productions at the Royal National Theatre, including King Lear, Coriolanus and Macbeth.
In terms of the big screen, Hopkins has played a father suffering from dementia in The Father, a President of the United States in Nixon, a jailed serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs and even a Pope of the Catholic Church in The Two Popes, which proves the kind of talent and versatility that has afforded him a reputation of sheer brilliance.
Still, there came a moment in Hopkins’ career when he was made to feel anxious about a particular scene despite already being an Academy Award winner. The moment came when he appeared in Robert Benton’s 2003 drama The Human Stain, based on the 2000 novel by Philip Roth, which also starred Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.
Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a revered professor who loses his job after using a racial slur. To regain his reputation, he writes a book about the incident with his colleague, who quickly discovers that Silk has been harbouring a dark secret. At the same time, Silk begins a relationship with a younger woman who also has a secret history, one that could potentially bring Silk’s life into sheer despair.
In one scene, Hopkins dances with Gary Sinise and though he admitted to dancing “all the time like that”, he still felt “little nervous of it at the beginning”. Thankfully, The Human Stain had a “very good choreographer” who worked with Hopkins and Sinise for a few days in preparation for the scene.
“She was a modern dance choreographer, and she choreographed the scene for us,” Hopkins explained to the BBC. “She showed us what we could do, and she said to me, ‘You’re not supposed to be Fred Astaire, you’re not supposed to be Gene Kelly. It doesn’t matter if you’re bad at it. Who cares?'”
With that kind of freedom and “openness”, Hopkins was able to “relax into” the scene and “have fun” with it. The scene opens with Hopkins dancing to the classic song ‘Cheek to Cheek’ before he invites Sinise to come and dance with him, and after “loosening up”, the two make their way across the makeshift dancefloor of the living room.
Discussing how the scene was shot, Hopkins noted, “Well, we did the dance maybe ten or 12 times. We would rehearse before each take, or we’d just shoot it. We shot it all in one night. We started in the dark, at about 6.30pm, and we went on until 6.30 in the morning. We were pretty wiped out in the end, but it was a lot of fun.” And that was the moment Hopkins once again overcame his nervousness.
