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Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE (born December 31, 1937) is a British-American actor who was born Philip Anthony Hopkins in
Margam, near Port Talbot, Wales. His parents were the late Richard
Arthur Hopkins and Muriel Yeats, who is a distant relation of poet William Butler
Yeats. He was influenced and encouraged to become an actor by fellow
Welshman Richard
Burton, whom he met briefly at the age of fifteen. Hopkins eventually moved
to London where he trained as an actor at RADA.
He conquered alcoholism in
1975 and has not drunk since, drinking carbonated apple juice at his March 2003 wedding. He now resides in the United States where he
became a naturalized
citizen on April 12, 2000. However, as a dual national, he retains
his knighthood and can use the title 'Sir'
in the UK, but not in the US, since it is considered 'inappropriate' according
to the British consulate.
Hopkins has been married three times. His first two wives were Petronella
Barker (1967-1972) and Jennifer Lynton
(1973-2003). He is now married to Stella
Arroyave. He has a daughter named Abigail Hopkins (born 1968) from his first
marriage.
His most famous role was the brilliant portrayal of the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in the film The
Silence of the Lambs (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor)
opposite Jodie Foster as
Clarice Starling,
who also won the Academy Award for Best Actress
that year. In fact the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture
as well that year, no doubt due to the superb and electrifying interplay between
Hopkins and Foster. It is the shortest lead acting Oscar-winning performance
ever, as Hopkins is only on the screen for about sixteen minutes. Hopkins
reprised the role of Dr. Lecter twice in Hannibal and Red Dragon. Lecter first appears in the film
Manhunter, in which the role was
played by Brian Cox. Red
Dragon was a remake of Manhunter, which allowed Hopkins to play
Lecter in adaptations of all three Lecter novels. Lecter's slurping sound from
Silence of the Lambs was apparently improvised. All three films were
based on the bestselling novels by Thomas Harris, who reportedly was very pleased
with Hopkins' portrayal of Lecter.
Hopkins has also been Oscar-nominated for The Remains
of the Day (1993), which was based on the award-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Other
Oscar-nominated performances of Hopkins include: Nixon (1995) and Amistad (1997). Hopkins won the BAFTA
Award for Best Actor for his perfomances in The
Silence of the Lambs and The Remains of the Day.
He has played many famous historical and fictional characters including: Zorro (The Mask of Zorro 1998), Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre
Dame 1982), Othello (Othello 1981), Pablo Picasso (Surviving Picasso 1996), Richard Nixon (Nixon
1995), Titus
Andronicus (Titus 1999), John Quincy Adams (Amistad 1997),
Adolf Hitler (The
Bunker 1981), John Frost (A Bridge Too Far 1977) Charles Dickens (The
Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens 1970), William Bligh (The Bounty 1984), Richard Lionheart
(The Lion in
Winter 1968), David Lloyd
George (Young Winston 1972), Abraham Van Helsing (Bram Stoker's
Dracula 1992), Yitzak Rabin (Victory at
Entebbe 1976) and C. S. Lewis (Shadowlands 1993).
He was made a Commander of the British Empire
(CBE) in 1987, and knighted in 1993.
Today, Hopkins also takes time to support various philanthropic groups. Hopkins was past Gala
Fundraiser Guest of Honour for Women in Recovery, Inc., a Venice,
California-based non-profit organization offering a live-in, Twelve-step
program of rehabilitation for women in need. Other past honorees of this
organization have included Jamie Lee Curtis; the 2005 honoree was Angela Lansbury. He is
also a volunteer teacher at the Ruskins School of Acting in Santa Monica,
California.
He has offered his personal support to various charities and appeals, notably
becoming President of the National Trust's Snowdonia Appeal, raising funds for
the preservation of the Snowdonia National Park and to aid the Trust's efforts
to purchase parts of Snowdon. A book
celebrating these efforts Anthony Hopkins' Snowdonia was published
together with Graham Nobles. |
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