The “sublime” actor Tom Pelphrey wants to emulate: “He’s always been good”
Being a working actor can’t always be easy, especially for those that spend many years without earning major recognition, so although Tom Pelphrey is an actor with immense talent who would consistently go against the grain by giving interesting performances, it felt like his terrific roles in Mank, Ozark, Love & Death, and even the misguided Marvel Netflix series Iron Fist were overlooked because of the size of his parts.
Thankfully, Pelphrey finally seems to be getting the adulation that he’s long since deserved for his performance in the HBO crime drama Task, in which he plays a petty robber who gets caught in over his head after burglarising a drug house. Although many viewers may have tuned in to Task to see the excellent performance by Mark Ruffalo, the former has proved himself quite the equal.
While it could be discouraging to work for so long for only intermittent praise, he told The Independent that he was encouraged to keep working at his craft and cited one legendary actor as his biggest inspiration.
“So much of doing this job, I think, is living a life,” Pelphrey said, “I mean, you look at Anthony Hopkins, he’s always been good, and now, he’s just sublime. He glows to me”.
Any conversations about the greatest actor of all time would have to mention Hopkins at some point, as the number of masterpieces that he’s acted in is just staggering. That being said, he has also led a career that’s similar to Pelphrey, as he spent many years working under the radar before the industry began to celebrate his genius.
Hopkins had been a working actor on both the screen and stage for the first five decades of his life, but he was often overshadowed by elements beyond his control, wherein his amazing performance in the George Romero horror film Magic was ignored because of the initially mixed responses the film got, and his work in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man was overlooked because he was considered secondary to John Hurt, who played the titular role.
He may have been considered an unusual choice to play Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, especially when compared to how brilliant Brian Cox was in the same role when he appeared in Manhunter, but it was evident from the moment the film debuted that Hopkins had created an all-time great character with an indelible effect on popular culture, such that, in addition to winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, his role was named by the American Film Institute as the best villain ever.
While those who had been following Hopkins career would know, as Pelphrey said, that “he’s always been good”, the success of The Silence of the Lambs catapulted him to major stardom in the 1990s, as he would go on to appear in such acclaimed films as The Remains of the Day, Howard’s End, Shadowlands, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nixon, Amistad, and The Mask of Zorro.
Pelphrey was also keen to note that Hopkins, who is now 87 years old, hasn’t waned in his talents at all and continues to do great work, recently having won his second Oscar for ‘Best Actor’ for his heartbreaking turn in The Father. To be frank, Hopkins shouldn’t just be an inspiration to Pelphrey, but an icon that every working actor should look up to.
