Anthony Hopkins 'at peace with death' as he marks 60 years in film and TV
EXCLUSIVE: At 82, Sir Anthony says he feels 'lucky' to be alive and well and says the reality of life as a 'terminal condition' is 'a tremendous freedom'
Sir Anthony Hopkins says he feels a “wonderful peacefulness” about the approach of death, insisting: “There’s a tremendous freedom because there is nothing I can do about it.”
In an extraordinary interview to mark 60 years on screen, the 82-year-old actor told how he had accepted “the inevitable” – although he has no plans to go just yet.
He said: “Your life is terminal. It’s a terminal condition, you’re not going to get off the planet alive.
"With that reality there’s a tremendous freedom, a wonderful peacefulness about it.
“I remember when my mother was dying, she’d just had enough.
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"She was 89 and wanted to go. It’s a sad subject still, but that’s the inevitable.”
The Welsh star, who now lives in Los Angeles, opened up about his feelings to discuss his latest role as a dementia sufferer in a power struggle with his daughter, played by Olivia Colman.
His role in The Father, due out in January, marks a 60-year career that has earned him an estimated £125million.
Hopkins made his debut in 1960 BBC series A Matter Of Degree.
It means his most iconic role as cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs is half his professional lifetime ago.
That won him an Oscar for Best Actor – and another for co-star Jodie Foster – and sealed his position as one of the all-time leading film villains.
But Hopkins has appeared to soften with age and embrace more benevolent characters.
In 2019, he portrayed Pope Benedict XVI in Netflix film The Two Popes, for which he received Academy Award, Bafta and Golden Globe nominations.
And focusing on his latest character’s relationship with his daughter caused him to connect even more with his emotions – something he admits he has only learned to do in later life.
Hopkins has had a fractured relationship with his only child, musician Abigail, now 52.
He once revealed he had not spoken to her in 20 years and did not care whether or not she had children.
In a 2018 interview, he insisted: “I’m not cold. Her choice is her choice.
"I did the best I could but, you know, I think if somebody doesn’t want to be part of my life, fine.”
But Hopkins revealed he embraces his feelings more now – something he once saw as a weakness.
He said: “I still get slightly embarrassed when I see men cry, yet I cry easily myself.”
He also told how he is “haunted” by T.S. Eliot’s 1915 poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Hopkins explained: “He says at the end, ‘I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled’.
“And that, when I see it… I get tearful.
"It’s not even the melancholy or the depression, it’s the fact that I’ve had an extraordinary life.
“Pulling all the strings and the fabrics of my life together now, the past is very present to me – my own parents, my father who worked hard all his life, my mother, my grandparents.
“So I’m putting all those threads into me and I can’t even describe it, but there’s a locality in my head that I’m back in Wales.
“It has a tremendously powerful effect on me because I realise that I’m up there now and I’m not scared and not afraid.”
Hopkins, who was speaking to US radio station SiriusXM, has spent the last six months in lockdown at his LA home and worries about the impact Covid-19 has had on people.
He said: “I happened to pick up on something the other day about the increased massive depression throughout the world… at any age, but young people who have had their dreams dashed.
“I knew recently someone who committed suicide and it gave me a sense of how lucky I am.
“I have my moments of depression or melancholy, but my life hasn’t been rough in any way.
“Every few minutes, somebody’s dying because they can’t take the pain of life. But life is painful.
“When I did an acting forum last year, I said to these young kids, ‘Life is painful. It’s not all passion’.
"That brought the emotions up to me. I thought, ‘We’re pretty powerless’.”
Hopkins has been open about his own battle with alcohol and said he feels grateful to have been given a second chance – but death looms large in his mind.
He said: “I’m alive, I’m well and I’m filled with a perfect and abundant life.
"I do what I do for fun and free, this is worth doing.
“It’s all in the game, the wonderful game, the play of life upon life itself.
“Nothing to win, nothing to prove, nothing to win, nothing to lose. No sweat, no big deal. There are no big deals, only life itself.”
Hopkins says projects such as The Two Popes help to keep his mind focused – but admits that his wife, Stella Arroyave, frets about the future.
He said: “My wife sometimes worries about me, that if I stopped I’d probably snuff it.
“It’s important to keep working, body and mind. I’m in great health, I work at it. I haven’t smoked a cigarette for years.
"I don’t drink, but I love all the bad foods, spicy foods.
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