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Sir Anthony Hopkins Biography

in full Philip Anthony Hopkins

(1937–)

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Related Works

Films
1968 The Lion in Winter
1969 The Looking Glass War

1969 Hamlet
1971 When Eight Bells Toll
1972 Young Winston
1973 A Doll's House
1974 The Girl from Petrovka
1974 All Creatures Great and Small
1974 Juggernaut
1977 Audrey Rose
1977 A Bridge Too Far
1978 International Velvet
1980 The Elephant Man
1980 A Change of Seasons
1987 84 Charing Cross Road
1988 The Dawning
1988 A Chorus of Disapproval
1990 Desperate Hours
1991 The Silence of the Lambs
1992 Freejack
1992 Howards End
1992 Chaplin
1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula
1992 The Trial
1993 The Innocent
1993 The Remains of the Day
1994 Shadowlands
1994 The Road to Wellville
1995 Legends of the Fall
1995 Nixon
1996 August (also director)
1996 Surviving Picasso
1997 Amistad
1998 The Edge
1998 The Mask of Zorro
1998 Meet Joe Black
1999 Instinct
2000 Titus
2000 Mission: Impossible 2
2001 Hearts in Atlantis
2002 Bad Company
2002 Red Dragon
2003 The Human Stain
2004 Alexander
2005 Proof
2005 The World's Fastest Indian
Television
1972 War and Peace
1976 The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case
1978 Kean
1981 The Bunker
1981 Othello
1982 Little Eyolf
1987 Blunt
1988 Across the Lake
1989 Heartland

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(born December 31, 1937, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales) Welsh stage and film actor of burning intensity, often seen at his best when playing pathetic misfits or characters on the fringes of insanity.

Hopkins had early ambitions to be a concert pianist. He began acting at age 18, when he joined a YMCA dramatic club. He received a scholarship to the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, and he toured with the Arts Council as a stage manager and actor after his graduation, then spent two years with the Royal Artillery. Upon his demobilization he resumed his acting career, making his professional debut in 1960. A self-described “actor of instinct,” he gained needed training by enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1961, graduating as a silver medalist two years later. He first appeared on the London stage in Lindsay Anderson's production of Julius Caesar (1964). It was during this period that he appeared in his first film, the Anderson-directed short subject The White Bus (released in 1967).

Accepted into Laurence Olivier's National Shakespeare Company in 1965, he understudied Olivier in several productions before attracting critical attention with his performances as Edgar in The Dance of Death and Andrey Prosorov in The Three Sisters (both 1967). At last attracting the attention of the critics, he soon found himself being promoted as the “new Olivier,” and it was during this initial burst of adulation that he landed the juicy role of Prince Richard Plantagenet in the 1968 film version of The Lion in Winter. In 1974 he enjoyed a double professional triumph when he starred in the American television miniseries QB VII and also played the role of Dr. Martin Dysart in the original Broadway production of Equus.

Despite years of promise and glowing reviews, Hopkins found his career impeded by his recalcitrant attitude and battles with alcoholism. After waking up in a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel room in 1975 and not being able to remember how he got there, Hopkins resolved to reform: “I led a pretty self-destructive life for a few decades. It was only after I put my demons behind me that I was able to fully enjoy acting.” His career gained momentum, and his subsequent film and TV credits included his Emmy-winning performances as Bruno Richard Hauptmann in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976) and as Adolf Hitler in The Bunker (1981), as well as his sharply etched portrayals of two roles previously associated with Charles Laughton: Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982) and Captain Bligh in The Bounty (1984). In 1979 he won a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as a schizophrenic ventriloquist in the American film Magic (1978), and in 1989 he made his West End stage debut in the musical drama M. Butterfly.