Piers Morgan ‘I want you to be uncomfortable,’ said Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins gave me his number. But when I phoned, he’d changed it!
MONDAY, APRIL 26
One of the few high points of an otherwise disastrous Oscars show was Sir Anthony Hopkins winning Best Actor 29 years after he first won it for The Silence Of The Lambs.
The 83-year-old genius was fast asleep in Wales when he became the oldest person to ever scoop an acting Academy Award, thus immunising himself from the woke-ravaged ratings-wrecking snoozefest in Hollywood.
This was entirely in keeping with a man who once told me awards shows made him ‘very uncomfortable’, explaining: ‘I’m not into all that luvvie stuff. It gives me a rash.’
That revelation was one of many he disclosed during the most memorable interview I’ve had with any actor, one that provided a fascinating insight into his intense, complex and ferociously charismatic personality.
Right from the start of our hour-long CNN encounter, he was utterly uncompromising, insisting I call him ‘Tony’ when I introduced him as ‘Sir Anthony’.
‘I feel a bit uncomfortable doing that,’ I replied.
‘I want you to be uncomfortable,’ he replied, flashing me his fearsome Hannibal Lecter stare. ‘Call me Tony.’
It wasn’t an invitation.
Once a tormented, hell-raising alcoholic (‘I couldn’t stop drinking — it was like I was possessed by a demon’), he hasn’t touched a drop in 45 years and lives a reclusive but very contented life in Malibu with his third wife, Stella (‘She’s wonderful. I just obey orders. She’s always telling me to slow down because I’ve got the energy of a 35-year-old man’) and shuns the normal movie-star lifestyle and associations.
‘I don’t have any friends who are actors,’ he admitted. ‘I like actors, but I don’t want to be friends with them.’
In fact, he said he had only one famous friend, randomly naming the former American Idol judge Randy Jackson.
‘Well, we had one dinner together,’ he chuckled, ‘but I think he got sick of trying to contact me because I kept changing my phone number. I’m very paranoid. People say, “Are you on the run from someone?”’ ‘Can I be your second one?’ I suggested. ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed.
(After we finished, he scribbled down his phone number and handed it to me, saying: ‘Come over any time.’ But when I tried calling it a few months later, he’d already changed it again.)
Hopkins has brutally strict rules for friendship that may explain why he’s such a loner.
‘I’ve had a few friends along the way,’ he said, ‘so-called friends, God bless them. But they decided to offer me unsolicited criticism and I said goodbye. When people say “Do you mind if I’m honest?”, I say, yes, bye. And I’m doing them a favour because if they resent me, I’ll remove my presence from their lives. I’m really tough about that. I wouldn’t hang around with people if they want to drag me down. Go away. Do it to somebody else.’
He conceded his younger maniacal days made him a bad husband and father.
‘I’ve got happier as I’ve got older,’ he said. ‘I work hard, and I enjoy my life. I play piano, I write music and I paint. I don’t feel any angst about things. I’ve done everything beyond my greatest dreams. So, I’ve got no complaints, no demons lurking around in the corners of my mind.’
Hopkins believed his previous demons were driven by his terrible educational experience: ‘I was such a dummy at school and so ostracised and isolated that I look back on it as a tremendous gift because it made me so angry. I thought, one day I just want to become famous, end up in Hollywood, and show them all. So, I did!’
For a while, that success went to his head. ‘If you’re told that you’re God and that you’re special, you’re going to start hitting booze and drugs because the ego can’t cope with that, and you end up in rehab. I did a lot of partying when I was a young guy. But there’s a limit to it. It will kill you in the end.’
A few hours before this year’s Oscars, Hopkins — who won for his brilliant portrayal of an elderly man with dementia in The Father — posted a poignant video from beside his own father Richard’s grave. In it, he began to recite Dylan Thomas’s poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, but stopped after getting emotional and said: ‘God, I can’t do it.’
I wasn’t surprised to see the tears flow.
On the night he won his first Oscar, which he described as the ‘greatest rush’ of his life, it was 11 years to the day since his dad died — but Hopkins only realised the eerie coincidence as he stood on stage clutching his award.
‘I wondered if he was around somewhere that night because he influenced me very deeply,’ he said. ‘He was a great guy who gave me my values and told me not to take anything too seriously, stop making a big deal about everything and just get on with it. He was a tough guy, a baker, a very hard man. But he cried very quickly and got very emotional over my success.’
I asked what he’d like his epitaph to say. He thought for a bit then answered: ‘What was that all about?’
In Sir Anthony Hopkins’s case, his rollercoaster life has undoubtedly contained many incomprehensible moments, but he’s finally found peace and this new Oscar triumph cements his place in the pantheon of history’s greatest actors.
When I asked him for his own all-time shortlist, he replied: ‘Brando, Montgomery Clift, Bette Davis, Cagney and De Niro are the greats. It’s like they’re on their chariot and they’ve got the reins and they won’t let them go. They’ll follow the destiny of the work they’re doing to the limit.’
The same could be said of Hopkins, on and off screen. I just wish I’d moved faster to be his friend. Congratulations, Tony — can I have your new number?