Grandchildren? Sir Anthony does not know nor care
Actor’s admission reveals extent of rift with the daughter he walked out on when she was a toddler
IN THE BBC’S new adaptation of King Lear, Sir Anthony Hopkins is a man driven mad by the breakdown of the father-daughter relationship.
Not so in real life. In a startling interview, Sir Anthony has coolly declared that he neither knows nor cares if his only child, Abigail, has made him a grandfather.
Abigail was the child of Sir Anthony’s first marriage, to Petronella Barker. He left the family when she was a toddler.
In the Nineties, father and daughter had a brief rapprochement and Sir Anthony arranged for Abigail, then an aspiring actress, to have cameos in his films Shadowlands and The Remains of the Day. Now there is no contact.
Asked by Radio Times if he is a grandfather, Sir Anthony, 80, replied: “I don’t have any idea. People break up. Families split and, you know, you ‘get on with your life’. People make choices. I don’t care one way or the other.”
When told that sounded rather cold, Hopkins replied: “Well, it is cold. Because life is cold.”
Ms Hopkins, for the record, does not have children.
Sir Anthony also offered his take on King Lear, and with it a further insight into his own familial bonds. Lear’s favourite daughter is Cordelia because she is a tomboy, the actor explained. As for his other two daughters, Goneril and Regan: “He didn’t even like them. And that happens with families. “You don’t have to like your family. Children don’t like their fathers. You don’t have to love each other.”
Sir Anthony played Lear at the National Theatre in 1986, but feels he was too young to understand the role. This time, he plays the king as “a fast, furious old man who is incapable of love”. The BBC Two adaptation, starring Emma Thompson, Emily Watson and Florence Pugh as Lear’s daughters, airs next Monday.
The Oscar-winning star became an American citizen in 2000 and lives in California with his third wife, Stella Arroyave.
Ms Hopkins, a singersongwriter based in London, gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph a decade ago in which she described her difficult relationship with her father. She was 14 months old when Sir Anthony, then an alcoholic, abandoned the family. He soon married his second wife, Jennifer Lynton. Ms Hopkins said of her childhood: “I would see him, but maybe once a year. There is a little bit of sadness but I have to get on with my life.” They fell out when she was aged 16. Aged 18, she dropped out of university and later said: “I bottled up so much emotion in my childhood it caused my mind to go. I came very close to killing myself.” She has since stressed that she did not attempt suicide.
She has been reluctant to criticise her father. “I love my father. He has been very supportive,” she said in 2006, five years into their estrangement.