I’ve no idea if my daughter has any children, admits Anthony Hopkins
HIS latest role, King Lear, portrays a man who has a famously fraught relationship with his daughters.
And sadly, the same is true for veteran actor Anthony Hopkins. The 80-year-old has not spoken to daughter Abigail – his only child – for two decades.
Such is their estrangement that he does not even know if he is a grandfather.
Hopkins said he ‘didn’t care’ about the family split, admitting that he was ‘cold’ about his 48-year-old daughter, who uses the name Abigail Harrison.
Asked if Ms Harrison – an actress and theatre director who changed her surname to shield her so she could have a ‘career on her own terms’ – had children, Hopkins said: ‘I don’t have any idea. People break up. Families split and, you know, “get on with your life”. People make choices. I don’t care one way or the other. It is cold. Because life is cold.’
Ms Harrison was brought up by her mother, Hopkins’s first wife Petronella Barker, after the couple divorced when she was four. The pair briefly reconnected in the 1990s and she appeared in two of his films, Shadowlands and The Remains Of The Day. However, they quickly became estranged again and Hopkins, who stars in a BBC adaptation of King Lear to be shown next week, claimed he does not even know where his daughter lives.
As with Shakespeare’s tragedy, ‘children don’t like their fathers, you don’t have to love each other’, he told Radio Times. Hopkins also accused Hollywood of being ‘insidious’ and toxic, saying: ‘Look how people feel entitled to this, that and the other, and they can only be surrounded by yes people. I don’t want to be surrounded by people like that. The “luvvie” and the kissing cheeks – I can’t stand it. There’s so much hypocrisy.’
The actor lives in Malibu, California, with his third wife, Colombian antiques dealer Stella Arroyave, 62. He said she had ‘slowed him down’, adding: ‘She’s very good for me. My wife worries because I work too hard. I will go on working because what else would I do? I’ll retire when my teeth and my hair fall out.’
King Lear airs on BBC2 next Monday at 9.30pm.