Sir Anthony Hopkins has declared his "door is always open" to his estranged daughter Abigail.
The Silence of the Lambs actor, 87, has no relationship with his only child - who he has with first wife Petronella Barker - and recently admitted he "won't waste blood" trying to repair their rift but he's now insisted he would welcome a reconciliation at any time because he "will always be sorry for hurting her" by walking out when she was a child.
In his new autobiography We Did OK, Kid, he writes: "I hope my daughter knows that my door is always open to her. I want her to be well and happy.
"Until the day I die, I will never forget the sight of her in that crib, laughing up at me when I walked in the room the first year of her life, sleeping soundly the night I left.
"I will always be sorry for hurting her when I left the family, even as I believe to this day that I had no choice."
He drifted apart from Abigail following the end of his relationship with Petronella in 1972, explaining: "Aside from sending financial support, I didn't have contact with Petronella and Abigail for a few years.
"It is the saddest fact of my life, and my greatest regret, and yet I feel absolutely sure that it would have been much worse for everyone if I'd stayed."
Father and daughter briefly reconnected in the 1980s when Abigail was a teenager while he also bought her a home tried to help her carve out an acting career.
He added: "As a teenager, Abigail came to stay with me now and then, though she kept her hoodie up over her head much of the time - as teenagers will, I suppose. I helped her get small acting parts and I tried to make her feel as welcome as I could. I bought her an apartment."
However, they drifted apart again and Hopkins still feels the loss of their relationship is a "tremendous source of pain".
The actor wrote: "Abigail never seemed able to forgive me for leaving the family when she was a baby. She had her reasons. I can't blame her for that. That's life. But it was and is a tremendous source of pain."
