Man of many contradictions confronts personal demons

Sir Anthony Hopkins tells Tony Earnshaw how playing an exorcist priest made him rethink his views on God and the devil.

Sir Anthony Hopkins once told me he had no ambitions left and fancied ending his days as a beach bum in Malibu. He tries hard to convince journalists that he’s an unserious actor and far from a deep thinker. Yet despite his protestations, Hopkins remains one of the world’s pre-eminent performers, even if he has stuck to his promise never to go back to the theatre.

Hopkins’ entire methodology has been shaped by his years on the stage. Nowadays he works when he wants to, choosing roles and projects that suit his mood. It comes as no surprise to see him as a legendary exorcist in The Rite, a spine-tingler in the mould of The Exorcist. In truth it’s the kind of thing Hopkins could play in his sleep. Yet he displays no indolence. Instead he brings to the part the self-same thought and consideration that have marked out all his film work.

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He made his debut, aged 31, opposite Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn as his warring parents in The Lion in Winter in 1968. Forty years on it might be argued that he has eclipsed O’Toole, just as his versatility on film has arguably overshadowed that of Laurence Olivier, his mentor and patron, and Richard Burton, the older Welsh boy who left the valleys and conquered Hollywood.

It’s perfectly clear: at 73 Anthony Hopkins much prefers the life of a movie star to the slog of a theatre actor.

“The great thing about film is you can get to do it again and again, and you have a life,” says Hopkins with candour. “In the theatre – even Ken Branagh says this, and Ken has done so much – you wake up in the morning and you think, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do it all over again’. Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen, they love it. I marvel at their tenacity. I don’t have it in me. I like to have a good time. I love the sunshine. I love Malibu.”

Yet Hopkins is no slouch when it comes to prepping his work in film. For The Rite, playing ace exorcist Father Trevant, he committed to memory a wordy screenplay that included several chunky speeches in Latin. Coming to it late after a holiday with his wife he realised how much he had to learn. “Every day I’d type it all out. I had a tape recorder so I’d listen to it and force-feed myself the lines. I’m obsessive about it. You can’t wing it. You can’t just pretend. But I love that pressure. I have the actor’s dream, that I’m on the set and I don’t know any lines. I suppose that compensates the unconscious fear I have. I work and work and work and work so hard to make sure I know it.”

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This from a man who aspires to be a beach bum in a ragged straw hat, beard and T-shirt.Like the cliché, Hopkins is a mass of contradictions. He aspires to be a lazy old man, watching the waves roll in. Yet his work ethic is hewn from the Welsh valleys of his birth. Similarly his approach to the subject matter of The Rite underlines his attitude to work. “Most days I struggle with my lack of faith and my unbelief. I don’t know what I believe,” he says, opening up and revealing the deep thinker beneath the artisan’s exterior.

“When I was a little boy, we had a doctor called Dr Philips. He was a scientist but also a very devout man – looked a little bit like Albert Einstein. And on his grave [is written] ex umbris ad lucem. I said, ‘What does that mean?’ ‘From darkness into light.’

“When I was younger – I was brought up as an agnostic – I thought I knew a lot of things. I know nothing now. I don’t know what the hell I believe – whether I believe in God, Santa Claus or Tinkerbell. Sometimes I feel there’s this scratch inside, God’s fingernail, and somehow I’m cast out of the darkness back into the light. And ex umbris ad lucem.”