HOPKINS: WHY MY DAD RESENTED ME

The twist in Olivia’s new film

The Father is that although it deals with the heart-wrenching topic of dementia, the story is told largely from the point of view of the sufferer. Anthony, father to Olivia’s character

Anne, is an elegant widower in his eighties who lives in an airy London flat filled with books, paintings and opera, until his grip on reality starts to loosen.

‘He was obviously a successful man,’ says Sir Anthony Hopkins, who plays him. ‘He’s bright, he was an engineer. He’s disciplined and ordered and used to having his own way, and probably a bit of a tough father. He’s not a bad man, just an authoritarian, and it’s a terrible thing when he finally starts to lose it.’

He says he based the character on his own father, Richard. ‘I didn’t consciously play it that way but I look at the film now and think, “That’s my old man, that’s my father.”

‘My parents didn’t suffer from dementia – at least, I don’t think they did – but my father could be pretty tough and argumentative and he suffered from depression towards the end. He had a year of decline from heart disease, and he had become quite belligerent with me, maybe because I represented someone who had more years ahead of them than he did.

‘I do remember, after he died, picking up his glasses and a book he’d been reading and thinking, “God, did he ever exist?” Do any of us really exist? I don’t know.’

Olivia and Sir Anthony in The Father