The one role Anthony Hopkins always wanted to play: “Would be nice”
Sir Anthony Hopkins has ticked off nearly every actor’s dream list of roles. Having started in theatre under the tutelage of none other than Laurence Olivier, he had already tackled some of the greatest parts by the time he turned 30. Shakespeare, Ibsen, Pinter—these dramaturgs were mere stepping stones on his path to Hollywood and even greater opportunities on both stage and screen.
Hopkins has portrayed Hamlet and King Lear, Richard the Lionheart and Odin, King of Asgard. He’s played serial killers and narrated How the Grinch Stole Christmas, nailed the art of stoic longing in Remains of the Day and put his own spin on the pure, unadulterated evil of Adolf Hitler. He has, in short, done pretty much everything an actor can do, and even if he hadn’t, he holds enough sway in Hollywood that he could surely put any outstanding wishes out into the universe and have a producer come knocking on his door shortly thereafter.
However, in 1992, the same month he won the Oscar for his portrayal of the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins sat down with Interview and revealed (or, to be more specific, his publicist revealed) that there was one role he still had a hankering to play.
When asked what character the Oscar winner was dying to inhabit, Hopkins’s friend and publicist Bob Palmer said, “A remake of Shane would be nice.” Whether or not the actor enthusiastically nodded his head or simply let the comment slip by without a reaction is not elaborated upon in the article, but there was no indication that he contradicted the statement.
If Palmer was, in fact, voicing a desire that Hopkins had previously expressed, it’s pretty surprising. George Stevens’s 1953 film is a classic western set in Wyoming in the late 19th century. In other words, it’s the one genre that Hopkins hasn’t explored, which makes it all the more enticing and strange that it has never come to fruition.
The film stars Alan Ladd as a retired gunslinger who becomes embroiled in a dispute between a family of humble homesteaders and a ruthless rancher. It’s a premise that has been rehashed countless times before and since but which Stevens managed to revitalise. Ladd had had a prolific career in the 1930s and ‘40s in hardboiled crime dramas and film noir, and in Shane, his careworn features and world-weariness were the perfect fit for a man who has seen better days and just wants to hang up his spurs.
At the time of the interview, Hopkins was only in his mid-50s, a little more than a decade older than Ladd, who, though only 40 in the movie, looked much older. Now in his late 80s, Hopkins has probably aged out of the gunslinging window, even the retired gunslinging window, which is a shame because there aren’t many genres that the actor hasn’t tried, and he’d no doubt be the perfect fit to play a cranky cowboy.
