Anthony Hopkins Quotes

I don't like mushiness. I'm a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don't like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting much more open about all that.

We're always looking over our shoulders, 'what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one - am I making the right career move?' When you're young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth.

I don't have a vast longing for the stage.

Acting's entertainment. It's not brain surgery.

My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.

You have to have humor. If you don't have humor and you take yourself seriously, you're dead in the water. You have to be jostled. I love it. You've gotta have a laugh. It's better than working for a living.

You relax within the verse. You realize the structure of the verse and relax into it. It's like swimming. Or riding a bike. You can't make it sound real if you are thinking it through as you go. You can't think through Shakespeare, you have to speak it. And listen to the rhythm of it and then it takes you over. And to make it sound real you speak as if you believe it. Don't act it. Just be it.

My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots - cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it's just acting.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.

I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called 'Equis.' And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, 'I'm home.' I felt really at peace here.

Try not to be concerned with it. It's a spiritual thing. Don't look for the results, don't live in the payoff. Live in the moment which is a spiritual principle. Live in the moment and let the results take care of themselves. It's in the hands of God. The rest is all ego. And I have learned, over the years, it's got nothing to do with me. As my life is none of my business.

Most of my last 30 years have been like that. Results and manifestations of things I'd dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man. I realized it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, "This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I'd pictured it." My whole life has been like that and I'm fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go.

I just remember Kathy Bates getting on the stage and "The Oscar goes to Anthony Hopkins." I looked around, because I really thought Nick Nolte would get it. I really thought Nick would get it. I was very surprised. It was neck and neck with Nick Nolte and myself. So I really was expecting that to happen, and I went in there without any expectations.

I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between.

I have a punishing workout regimen. Every day I do 3 minutes on a treadmill, then I lie down, drink a glass of vodka and smoke a cigarette.

I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I'm very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing.

We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the boogeyman.

I hope I would not be so arrogant as to doubt anyone's religion or belief.

Oh yes. I'm an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.

Today is the tomorrow we feared yesterday.

If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn't be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven't the patience for them. It's maybe shallow, but that's why I'll never be part of the acting set.

I've reached a happy stage in my life - you can call it "happy" - but I have no expectations anymore. I'm glad I'm not young anymore.

I don't have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don't know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don't know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don't think you need all that stuff.

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don't, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that's fine, but I can't work like that.

Danger is the spice of life and you've got to take a risk now and then ... that's what makes life worthwhile.

I've played a lot of parts. But I don't look at my feeling is that this is a job. It's given me a good living.

I always distrust the word art when it is applied to acting.

I'm just an actor. It's the way the script is written, and it's easy. I don't have think about it. When you receive the script, you know pretty well how to play it, apart from little technicalities like the accent.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.

I play piano and that's my love. I read and I paint and I compose music, so I've got a pretty full creative life. And it's not because, I'm obsessively creative.

I have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can't arrest me.

I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

That's what happens if you don't address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal.

People ask me how did you choose the part and how did you prepare for this work? I just learned the lines and showed up; I don't know what else to say because that's all I know how to do.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

I'm having a great life. And I'm 73 and they still phone me up and ask me to do a job here and there.

Acting is constricted because you have the lines. But I improvise with it and what I learn on the set. I improvise rhythms and just changes.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can't even comprehend it. It's such an illusion, it's such a strange thing.

I think doubt is a very healthy way to live.

The reward is in the doing of it.

I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.

When people call me Sir Anthony I just think oh, that's a bit odd. But I'm not cynical about it. Um, I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever name I'm called.

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air.

A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.

Getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.

I found a way into the acting business because I thought, well, it beats working for a living, and so that's what I do. But I still feel like a bit of a stranger in it all. I've never really belonged anywhere.

When you're young, you're very insecure. And if I could learn, if I could revisit my own past I could say to myself, don't think too much, just get on and do it.

I'm the slowest driver in the world.

I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, "It's a good script," I'll do it. I don't plan. I've got a lot of things to do. I'm at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out.

I love roller coasters. I don't get a chance often, but I've gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.

I don't have many friends; I'm very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I've never been really close to anyone.

I'm glad I'm not young anymore. I don't want to start all over again.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

My life is not my own business.

My father wasn't a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher - one of those Victorians, hard as iron - but my dad was tough enough.

I said once that if they gave me enough money to read the phone book, I'd do it. I live in a total state of non-expectation. I don't expect things, and I keep my expectations very low about everything

Living with reality is a very good trick. It gives you tremendous freedom and it changes the structure of molecules of your soul by living through reality because you don't expect anything anymore, which is a weird paradox.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor.

The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad ... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

I don't like freeloaders; I don't like people who are negative.

Oliver Stone is a great director and I've seen many films over the years, but I try to create stuff out of my own imagination. I want to break all the rules and mess about with it and make a different movie just for the fun of it.

I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. "Action" - and then do it.

I love life because what more is there?

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

I drank a lot, but I wouldn't have missed it. I look back on it as sort of dreary enjoyment, because I don't have to be there anymore.

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.

I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.

Mortality is the great rescuer, it finally takes you out of everything, and that makes life good.Read Carl Jung. It makes life richer because this is it; none of us know where we go and this is the fun of it.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox.

I watched a film with a very famous, great, great actor, I won't mention his name because everyone loves his memory, but I thought, "God he was acting a lot." Great actor, but nonstop acting. Wall to wall, fitted-carpet acting.

I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.

Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.

I read a lot, that's my main hobby. I've got an iPad which I store books on and I read voraciously. I'm a slow reader but I'm obsessive. I make references, underline things, cross-reference. I'm an autodidact.

I come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like being, wasting my time with - life's too short.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don't want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can't do it anymore. And that's what I want to do.

How do you play Hannibal Lector? Well just don't move. Scare people by being still.

Whether it's overeating or it's overworking or over-sex or whatever it is, alcoholism, drug addition, we push ourselves to the brink and then pull back because it's kind of exciting.

I'm a pretty tough guy, you know. I'm a pretty hard man. I've got a lot of compassion, but I don't waste time with people.

As a Welshman that can't sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir - the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself.

I'd like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don't. I look in the mirror, and I see me.

This industry has been really good to me. It's been a great life. I'm not through yet. I'm ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.