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Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins has built a screen career around control: the measured voice, the watchful pause, the sense that something important is being held just out of sight. That restraint can become menace, authority, sorrow or dry comedy, allowing him to move between historical figures, literary adaptations, horror, science fiction and large-scale franchise filmmaking without losing his distinctive presence. Born in Port Talbot, Wales, on 31 December 1937, Hopkins was drawn more readily to painting, drawing and piano than to schoolwork. A meeting with fellow Welsh actor Richard Burton at 15 helped inspire his interest in acting. After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, completing national service and training at RADA, he developed his craft in repertory theatre. Laurence Olivier later invited him to join the Royal National Theatre, where Hopkins served as Olivier’s understudy. His early screen work included Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter and Sir Frederick Treves in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. The role that transformed his film career was Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins made Lecter unnervingly composed and conversational, winning the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Actor before returning to the character in Hannibal and Red Dragon. Yet Lecter represents only one corner of his range. In The Remains of the Day, Hopkins played the butler Stevens with a performance built from discipline and emotional containment. His other roles have included C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands, Burt Munro in The World’s Fastest Indian, Odin in the Thor films, Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, Robert Ford in Westworld and Pope Benedict XVI in The Two Popes. In The Father, Hopkins played a man living with Alzheimer’s disease, bringing confusion, fear and flashes of warmth into the same shifting performance. The role earned him a second Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the oldest winner of an acting Oscar. It was another reminder of what has sustained his work across stage, film and television: an ability to make even the smallest change in expression carry dramatic weight.