The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Mick Brown has an audience with Sir Anthony Hopkins
‘No matter how much success you have, it’s not going to fix you’
At the age of 81, Sir Anthony Hopkins, star of film and theatre, painter and pianist, has found a new, and perhaps rather surprising, outlet for his talents. It was the actor Mark Wahlberg, with whom he was working on a film called Transformers: The Last Knight three years ago, who alerted Hopkins to the mixed delights of Twitter, and now he is hardly off it. Anyone wishing for an insight into the life and state of mind of Anthony Hopkins need look no further. There he is, mugging madly for the camera and dancing a gentle jig in front of one of his colourful, neo-expressionist paintings – Hopkins is an accomplished artist; there he is, sitting at his piano with his tabby cat on his lap playing Gershwin – an accomplished musician, too; and there he is, singing along at a dinner party to Leonard Cohen’s Here It Is.
‘Oh yes, Leonard Cohen’s my favourite.’ In the hotel suite in Santa Monica where we are talking, he sinks back into the sofa, and quotes a line from the song. ‘“May everyone live, May everyone die, Hello, my love, And my love, goodbye.” That sums it all up for me. There’s such peace in that. That’s it. All it is.’
His assistant has prepared for his arrival: a pot of English breakfast tea and biscuits. Old habits die hard. (Hopkins has listed ‘the pleasures of my life’ as ‘a cat, a piano, a book, and a cup of tea’.) He is wearing a vivid Hawaiian shirt, baggy trousers, a pair of huaraches, no socks: a heavy-set man, almost bullish, with a fine dusting of white hair, mild eyes, a cheerful look on his face.
Hopkins lives in Los Angeles. He first came here in 1973, escaping from Britain and what he feared would be a future as a Shakespearean actor – as he once put it, standing in the wings at the Old Vic in ‘wrinkled tights, thinking, “Oh God, another endless production” for the rest of eternity’. His first job on arriving in California was a film with Goldie Hawn. He returned to Britain in the 1980s as a Hollywood star, but California, it seems, had stayed in his blood. Twenty-five years ago he came back, and here he has stayed ever since. He now lives with his wife, Stella Arroyave, in a house in Malibu, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific – a house that was once owned by Hawn. He laughs at the circularity.
People have talked in the past of Hopkins’ brooding silences, an almost sinister hint around the eyes – a confusion, perhaps, with his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter (‘That’s followed me around for years…’ he says, lightly brushing it aside). But that must be a different Anthony Hopkins; it’s certainly not this one, who is a picture of serene bonhomie.
Hopkins is starring in a new film, The Two Popes, which tells the story of a series of imagined meetings a decade ago between the then Pope Benedict XVI, played by Hopkins, and the Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) – later to be Pope Francis. Bergoglio, a fierce critic of Benedict’s papacy, has come to Rome expecting to tender his resignation, unaware that Benedict is pondering his own decision to retire, and the questions of both his legacy and who might be his successor.
What follows is a series of sparring sessions between two men who could hardly be more different in outlook and temperament – the aloof, conservative Benedict, who relaxes in his lavish private chambers by playing Mozart on his piano (a breeze for Hopkins); and the more liberal, reforming and sociable Bergoglio, with his passion for football and the music of Abba – illuminating the Catholic Church at a moment of crisis and change.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Anthony Mccarten, who has a distinguished track record of films based on truelife characters – his previous subjects include Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything),
Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour) and Freddie Mercury (Bohemian Rhapsody )– The Two
Popes is a brilliant film that addresses serious questions about faith, conscience and guilt, but is overlayed with a delightful patina of comedy. It also looks ravishing, not least the scenes of the papal conclave, filmed inside
‘Playing Hannibal Lecter has followed me around for years…’
a Sistine Chapel painstakingly reproduced on the backlot at Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
It is Hopkins’ best film performance in years, although he admits that he was initially paralysed by a fear of taking on the role. He had been working non-stop, filming Transformers: The Last Knight, King Lear
and the television series Westworld, when he agreed to the part – but when the script arrived, with its demand for him to speak Italian and Latin, his spirit faltered.
‘I said to my wife, “I just can’t do it. I hope it doesn’t mean a lawsuit but my brain can’t take any more.” I was just exhausted. I’m not given to terrible neurosis, and all that nonsense, because I’m tough and strong – I always have been. But a klaxon horn went off – blah, blah.’
As it was, he was able to delay his involvement until filming of Bergoglio’s early life in Argentina was completed, before joining the production in Rome.
‘My memory of making it is rather vague…’ He looks up towards the ceiling. ‘We stayed in a nice hotel. My wife was there. We had the regalia, designed by the Vatican people themselves. I put the hair on and I thought, my God, I look a little bit like him. And then we started. And it was easy. Pretty simple. I didn’t do much research. I work from what’s there. I find that’s the best way. A bit like James Cagney; you show up, say good morning to the crew and just do it, without any intensity.’ He gives a beaming smile.
Acting, he says, ‘is just a luxury I do’. But of course, it’s not as easy as that. He is legendarily obsessive about preparation, reading and rereading the script ‘many, many times – there’s a rumour that I go over it 250 times, not true’ – to commit it to memory. ‘My wife says I work very hard. It doesn’t feel like work to me. I enjoy it. I don’t get frazzled by it. I love learning lines. There’s now a process where you can have a feed in your earphone – they do it out here.’ He sighs. ‘I think it’s the fastest way to dementia.
‘The sheer pleasure of it for me is knowing what you’re saying – take up the cobbles on the street, have a look and see what’s underneath, and then put it all back together, and find meaning in it.’
He talks about Benedict. Conservative, strict, authoritarian – all of this, yes – but also a man of great understanding, skill and intellect, who grew up in pre-war Germany and was drafted into the Hitler Youth (‘and people were very quick to condemn him for that’) but did not attend meetings.
‘He knew about the terrible, appalling horrors that Germany went through that gave rise to Hitler, and the horrors that he inflicted – and I understand this myself because I’m old enough to remember the war, the end of the war. I have that knowledge inside me.’
Hopkins was eight years old, he says – pausing to reflect, ‘God, it’s like I’ve lived somebody else’s life’ – the year after the war ended. He had come up to London from Wales with his parents. ‘I remember my father wanted to go to a photo exhibition in Leicester Square, and the commissionaire said, “You can’t bring the boy in.” So I waited with my mother outside; a beautiful summer’s day, the streets were full of American soldiers waiting to go home, the smell of their cigars. And my father came out. It was terrible, he said. It was the first photo exhibition of Bergenbelsen. Because nobody knew, you see? So that’s part of my memory; my world. It all feeds in. So I understood Benedict.’
He is in a ruminative mood, frequently digressing into recollection, anecdotes, snatches of poetry. He likes to memorise Eliot and Auden ‘to keep my brain active’.
As an only child growing up in Port Talbot, Hopkins was generally regarded as
‘I said to my wife, “I just can’t do it… My brain can’t take any more”’
a dead loss, more interested in painting and playing the piano than schoolwork. ‘You have a big head like Dumbo,’ his grandfather once told him. ‘Pity there’s nothing inside it.’
His wife, Arroyave, is making a documentary about his life, he says, and they were back in Wales recently, where she interviewed his old teacher. ‘He said, “When Anthony was at school he wasn’t very good; he couldn’t play sports, he didn’t join in with the school plays, tried the School Certificate twice.” When my wife told me that I thought, that’s extraordinary.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was as if it had nothing to do with me.’
Acting saved him. A newspaper advertisement led him to the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, from which he graduated at 19. He later went on to Rada, and a place at the National Theatre.
He was an angry young man, he says. ‘But aren’t we all when we’re younger?’ Discontented, irritable and resentful, he goes on. And drinking too much. ‘I was given a great deal of opportunities, and I bit the hand that fed me.’
In 1973 he walked out of the National Theatre mid-run in a production of Macbeth. His first marriage, to the actor Petronella Barker, with whom he had a daughter, Abigail, had ended in divorce, and film work in America beckoned. Hopkins would remain here for the next 15 years.
The first years were not easy. His drinking gave him a reputation for being difficult. In 1975 he gave up for good, so the story has it, after waking up in a hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, with no memory of how he got there. How, I ask, did he deal with that?
‘Maybe a bit of Welsh wisdom, I don’t know. I realised that I was going down the road to perdition and hell if I didn’t change my way of life. And I thought, well, do I want to go on like this, feeling entitled, and so red hot, or whatever I thought I was? Because success is a very dangerous thing.
‘It’s a bit of fun, but I started to figure out, no matter how much success you have, it’s not going to fix you; a big house is not going to fix you, a fast car is not going to fix you. But as you get older there’s a kind of letting go.
‘I see it in young actors: “I want this and I want that now, and rewrite this.”
And I think, well, the script’s pretty good. Why do you want a rewrite?
I understand, because I’ve been there myself. You want to say, “Cool down,” but they’re not going to, because they are what they are.’
In the late 1980s, Hopkins, along with his second wife Jennifer Lynton, whom he had met when she was a film production assistant, returned to Britain. In 1992 he won an Academy Award for his role as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, beginning a period in which he made arguably his finest body of film work: Howards End, The
Remains of the Day and Shadowlands.
‘And everything in life seemed fine. But I was restless. I went back to the theatre, and I wasn’t happy there – I wasn’t at all happy. And I was trying to figure out, what is it that I want?’
In 1994, out of the blue, he received an offer from Oliver Stone to play Richard Nixon.
‘I said, “Are you crazy? You need an American actor.” He said, “Well I’m coming to London anyway, let’s meet and have breakfast.” I was leaving the house to go to the meeting, and my ex-wife Jenny said, “Don’t say yes, because you’ll make a fool of yourself.” I said, “OK”’ – he mimics Nixon’s famous line – ‘“I’m not a crook…”
‘I was on my way across Hyde Park to the hotel, and I stopped, I remember – a wet Monday morning – and I thought, well I can live here for the rest of my life and play nice, respectable parts, a nice career: the BBC and the theatre, do a bit of Uncle Vanya. I thought, oh God, do I want that? And an inner voice said, “No, you want an adventure.”
‘So I got to the meeting and Oliver came in and he said, “So you’re chicken, eh? You’re not going to play it…” I said, “I’m going to play it.” And that was it.’ He laughs. ‘And I came back to California. I remember, we were rehearsing just around the corner from where we’re sitting now, and I thought, this is where I really want to be.’
In 2000 he became an American citizen – a British tabloid dubbed him ‘Lecter the Defector’ – and three years later he married Arroyave, following the dissolution of his marriage to Lynton. Colombia-born Arroyave, who is 18 years younger than Hopkins, was a dealer in art and antiques when they met, after he walked into her shop just down the road in Pacific Palisades.
‘This beautiful woman said, “Hello, how are you? I know you. Give me a hug.” I said, “I like that” – a piece of furniture. She said, “You can have it.” I said, “No, I’ll buy it.” And then she phoned me to say that she had
‘I was given a great deal of opportunities, and I bit the hand that fed me’
another piece of furniture I might like, and we started going out together. And then I left, took off, because I didn’t want to be involved.’
Why not?
‘I’d been married twice. I just wanted to be on my own. Independent. Male.’ He chuckles. ‘I wanted to be Clint Eastwood, out in the beyond. But then of course that didn’t happen. But everything happens for the best.’
It would not be an exaggeration, I suggest, to say that she has had a transformative effect on his life.
‘Oh absolutely! Powerful! Huge!’
He can’t talk enough about this. His wife is ‘much speedier’, he says. ‘She’s Latin, and she’s boom, boom, boom. And I can’t keep up with her. And it’s wonderful! And all of my friends now are her friends, these Latin women, and I don’t have a clue. I say, “What are you talking about?” “It’s none of your business. Shut up.”’ He laughs. ‘And I think, how extraordinary, these women, because they’re so voluble and alive. They’re the ocean, and me, I’m just a bit of a stick in the mud. But I love that about my life.’
She looks after you.
‘She does.’ He does aquatic exercise each day in the pool, works out on the treadmill and with weights, and has a dietary regimen of salads, proteins and green juices. ‘She’s a piece of work. Always making sure I’m OK. “Slow down, don’t do so much.” So I do.
‘And she’s smarter than me. I’ve done some bad things in my life. I’ve hurt people. But she said, “For God’s sake, forgive yourself. You’ve done things. We all have.” She’s taught me to not be tough on myself. And I’m not any longer.’
He thinks for a moment. ‘That’s the sad thing today. Everyone is so unforgiving. And so many people today are so miserable. They decide they are victims, so they’ve got to be outraged. What a waste of energy!’
Before our meeting, he says, he had been nearby in Venice,
buying some paints. ‘And I was driving round some streets I hadn’t seen for years, and I was thinking back on my life; 45 years ago almost, I came out here and my life changed; I stopped drinking and all that. I’m not an evangelist or do-gooder, but my life turned around, and I stopped living how I had been living, and I started meeting people who were so full of life and enthusiasm, and happy. They were all older than me, most of them, and they’ve all gone now. So many people – my mother, father, friends I knew – all gone.’ And does that thought frighten you? ‘No! It’s enriching in a way.’
He starts to recite from TS Eliot, The Love
Song of J Alfred Prufrock, and it is as if the room has darkened, and a single spotlight fallen on him as he talks. ‘I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid…’ He falls silent. ‘I say that and I get moved by it…’
Eliot, Auden, all those poets… ‘My God,’ he says, ‘it’s like taking non-lethal doses of reality when you read people like that – because they get right down the centre of it all, what life is about, and we’d better appreciate it now, because one day it’s going to be over. And beyond that we don’t know. And that’s the wonderful thing. We don’t know!
‘I look back and think what an extraordinary life I’ve lived – an extraordinary life, and yet I can’t take credit for it. I didn’t know what time of day it was at school, I was hopeless. And yet I became an actor in a very short period of time, and through a series of shifts and coincidences became very successful, and thought, well, I’ve got it! I made it! But I look back now and realise that whatever has happened to me was because of some kind of strange, inner thing that I feel is beyond me.’ He smiles. ‘My
life is totally incomprehensible.’
There is a line that Pope Benedict says in
The Two Popes: in silence it’s sometimes difficult to hear the voice of God. ‘And I think that doubt that’s in him is the most compassionate moment, because what do we know? I’m not a religious person, but I do know there’s something much deeper in my life than I can begin to comprehend and which I feel connected to, all the time. Because I feel at peace. I do – more and more and more.’
His voice catches in his throat as he says this, and for a moment it seems he might cry.
You’re a very emotional man, I say. ‘Yes.’
It strikes me, I continue, that what I think of as your most powerful roles – in Howards
End, The Remains of the Day, Shadowlands – are all studies in repressing emotion (or, in the case of Hannibal Lecter, devoid of emotion altogether).
He nods. ‘Somebody asked me once, how did I play the butler in The Remains of the
Day so still? Well, I couldn’t go round shouting and screaming could I?’ He laughs. ‘It’s a simple formula, but there is that feeling of tremendous loneliness, tremendous loss, tremendous turmoil that has to be pushed down. I think a lot of men do that. Women not so much.
‘When I was young, I was told, “Don’t show tears,” and for most of my life I was self-contained. But now as I’m getting older, I cry at the drop of a hat. And I don’t know why. Not out of depression. But out of sheer…’ He pauses, at a loss for words.
The day before, he says, as part of her documentary, Arroyave was filming him at their home, in the garden painting, walking on the beach. He quotes another stanza from Eliot. ‘I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach…
‘I can’t even bear to do it without choking up,’ he says. ‘Not out of grief. But a kind of… aah, life!’
The truth is, he never usually walks on the beach. ‘Because my knees hurt a bit.’
He laughs. ‘I should have died years ago.’
‘My wife is Latin. She’s boom, boom, boom. I can’t keep up with her. And it’s wonderful!’
The Two Popes is released on 29 November in cinemas and on 20 December on Netflix