Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins has recalled criticising a younger co-star for acting like James Dean.
The 87-year-old acting icon, best known for his role as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), cites legends such as Laurence Olivier and Katharine Hepburn as influences on his career.
Meanwhile, Hopkins has worked with numerous modern-day superstars, from Brad Pitt to Nicole Kidman and Ryan Gosling, telling The New York Times’s Interview podcast that he has “nothing but praise for” them.
However, Hopkins had less kind words to say about an unnamed actor from Canada, whom he attempted to advise on set.
“I was working with a young actor a few years ago, a young Canadian actor who looked a bit like James Dean. I think he thought he was James Dean,” said the Elephant Man star.
“We were doing a scene together and I said: ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Why are you mumbling?’” he added.
“I didn’t want to spoil his day, but I said: ‘If you do that, they will go to the pub next door, because you’re supposed to tell us the story. Speak up. Be clear. Wandering on like a backstreet Marlon Brando is not going to help you at all in your career.’”
“Never heard of him since,” Hopkins casually remarked in the interview.
Last year, Hopkins told the Associated Press that he believes acting is much “easier” for him now.
“As you get older, you have a little more knowledge of life. When you’re young, you think you know a thing or two, but you don’t. When you get to my age, you know a couple of tricks for a living,” he said.
His “tricks” to acting are simple: “Just learn the lines, show up and try to be real.”
Elsewhere in his interview with The New York Times, Hopkins opened up about his struggle with alcoholism. The actor has now been sober for nearly 50 years.
“I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realised that I could have killed somebody – or myself, which I didn’t care about,” he said.
“I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, ‘I need help.’”
The star of The Father said he then had a “spooky” moment where he heard a “vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice” speak to him and he instantly lost his desire to drink.
He said: “It was 11 o’clock precisely – I looked at my watch – and this is the spooky part: some deep, powerful thought or voice spoke to me from inside and said: ‘It’s all over. Now you can start living. And it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.’”
