In her amusing article on questionably ethnic screen portrayals (Let’s at least see the films we denounce, 16 December), Helen Lewis refers to Anthony Hopkins’ casting as Othello in the BBC’s 1981 production, which caused something of a furore at the time.
So imagine what might have been the tempest unleashed had Richard Attenborough got his way, years before Ben Kingsley was even a gleam in his eye, and snared Hopkins to play the title role of Gandhi in a long-cherished project. “With careful makeup and by losing a little weight, he would be superb as Gandhi,” the late Lord Dickie purred publicly in the mid-70s.
Hopkins later revealed to me that when he told his father about this bizarre casting notion, the old man replied: “So it’s going to be a comedy, is it then?”
Quentin Falk
Author, Anthony Hopkins: The Biography
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