Hopkins and Pryce joked over who was more Welsh on film set

ACTORS Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Jonathan Pryce bantered over who was the most Welsh on the film set of their new movie, according to its director.

They are starring together in One Life, which focuses on a man who helped to save the lives of hundreds of children from Nazis.

James Hawes, in an interview with BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, said he had a “tough day” filming with the pair and he said that Sir Anthony teased Sir Jonathan would be “absolutely unbearable” since being given a knighthood.

“When I told Tony that Jonathan was going to come on he said: ‘Oh god, he’s had a knighthood since we last met, he’s going to be absolutely unbearable,’” he said. “They spent most of the day bantering about which of them was the more Welsh.”

Sir Jonathan, 76, who starred in Pope Francis in The Two Popes alongside Sir Anthony, who played his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, was born in Carmel, near Holywell in Flintshire.

Oscar winner Sir Anthony, 86, from Port Talbot, won for Best Actor for playing Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs and for the role of Anthony, who has dementia, in The Father, after receiving six Academy Award nominations.

The film One Life focuses on the story of the British stockbroker Sir Nicholas Winton, along with the life of Lady Milena Grenfell-baines, who arrived in Britain from Prague at the age of nine during the summer of 1939.

She went on to become a pupil at the Czechoslovak Secondary School in Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, after the exiled Czech government rented a home in the area. Lady Grenfell-baines managed to escape the Nazis, who were occupying Czechoslovakia, with her three-yearold sister in 1939.

Director James Hawes said he felt it was important to redefine what people thought about when we heard the word “refugee”. “Refugees have become huge contributors and leaders in British society and we need to rethink who these people are and how we’re looking after them,” he added.