Anthony Hopkins has a complaint for young actors that he thinks could be detrimental to their careers.
The two-time Oscar-winning actor spoke at an event during Wednesday’s 2025 Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, where he was quick to call out the next batch of Hollywood legends and what might be holding them back.
“Young actors tend to mumble,” he said. “I know they’re trying to do Marlon Brando, but Brando was the greatest technician of all. He understood everything. He was a very smart man, and he knew how to do it.”
Throughout his acting career, the late Godfather actor had a very distinct voice, where he would sometimes mumble on purpose to sound more authentic, even occasionally going as far as using a mouthpiece to get the sound right.
Hopkins then recalled speaking to a fellow actor who did mumble one time. “‘I said, ‘You have no career left if you’re mumbling. Your part in this film is to tell a story,’” he said.
“The art in this film is to tell a story. It's nothing to do with makeup or being late on set. You're paid to be there on time or go,” he continued. “So I said to the young actor, I said, ‘You know your job is actually to speak the line. The audience has paid you; otherwise, you may as well go to the park next door.’ I said, ‘You can't work like that.’”
The Silence of the Lambs actor’s comments come after he recalled the time he criticized a younger actor for mumbling during an October appearance on The New York Times’s Interview podcast.
“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,” the Elephant Man star said. “We were doing a scene together and I said: ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Why are you mumbling?’”
“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,” he continued. “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.”
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