Hopkins Anthony Quotes & Sayings

Some of the best actors in the world are very exterior actors, Anthony Hopkins being one of them. He knows exactly how to turn his face to get a certain expression. He knows exactly what to do with eyes, and with his voice. It's very exterior. — Boris Kodjoe

I don't have a vast longing for the stage. — Anthony Hopkins

It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged ... and found wanting. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over. — Anthony Hopkins

I've always been hopeless at everything when I was a kid. That's why I became an actor - 'cause I couldn't do anything else. — Anthony Hopkins

Well, everyone likes movies when they're a little kid. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance. — Anthony Hopkins

If you have high expectations you're going to get resentments and all kinds of tension. — Anthony Hopkins

By giving up 'the need' and 'the want', things begin to happen for you — Anthony Hopkins

I'm not unfamiliar with music, and I really do write music. I've gotten a talent for it. I don't have the technical skills, but I do plan to learn. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don't have to do much - as long as you stay out of the way of others. That's why it works. — Anthony Hopkins

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort - I think it keeps you going. — Anthony Hopkins

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it. — Anthony Hopkins

I like to take it easy. — Anthony Hopkins

When I direct I try to keep it a unique design of my own. Naturally you're influenced. — Anthony Hopkins

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer. — Anthony Hopkins

My biggest fantasy love affair was with Dustin Hoffman. It's so bizarre. Also Anthony Hopkins. — Debra Messing

I don't push my luck. I don't worry about the results and therefore everything seems to work out well. That's something I've learnt over the years. The whole thing about the acting business is that it's a hit-or-miss game so I keep my distance from it. — Anthony Hopkins

I do my job. I do what I'm paid to do and I show up and I'm always prepared. I prepare by learning the text so well that when I show up, I'm relaxed and focused for the part. Now, whether that's good or bad I don't know. Whatever I'm going to say is going to sound very egocentric and self-centered so I'd better shut up. — Anthony Hopkins

When you're young, you're very insecure. And if I could learn, if I could revisit my own past I could say to myself, don't think too much, just get on and do it. — Anthony Hopkins

Mads Mikkelsen's acting is very subtle, precise, nuanced, so he brings something completely different to the character. If you compare Mads' Hannibal to Anthony Hopkins' for example. Not to mention that Mads Mikkelsen is very handsome and sexy, so he brings that to the character as well. — Caroline Dhavernas

I like people like Robert De Niro and Anthony Hopkins. And Gianfranco Zola, who played for Chelsea and Italy. He's an artist with his feet. — Phil Daniels

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry. — Anthony Hopkins

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you're doomed; you're finished. — Anthony Hopkins

I always distrust the word art when it is applied to acting. — Anthony Hopkins

People don't always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don't advance in life. — Anthony Hopkins

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I'd follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I've been very lucky. — Anthony Hopkins

I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood, and at least three times a week dream I am back there. — Anthony Hopkins

I don't have any [favourite role]. I'm just a working actor. — Anthony Hopkins

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor. — Anthony Hopkins

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor. — Anthony Hopkins

That's what happens if you don't address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal. — Anthony Hopkins

I never cling on to hope or certainty. They're the enemies of peace. — Anthony Hopkins

You could say one wine is like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz while another is like the mature Judy Garland, or that a big voluptuous chardonnay is like Marilyn Monroe -round, bosomy - you can remember that chardonnay, If you say a wine is snappy and lively, like Robin Williams, that's very different than the Anthony Hopkins of wine - urbane, sophisticated, measured, considered. — Karen MacNeil

I'm cheaper than Anthony Hopkins. — Ian McKellen

I would love to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins. How and why that would happen in a comedy I'm not sure - why he would be dragged over to my side, or I'd be be dragged over to his side. — Eugene Levy

You still wake up sometimes. You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs. — Anthony Hopkins

You relax within the verse. You realize the structure of the verse and relax into it. It's like swimming. Or riding a bike. You can't make it sound real if you are thinking it through as you go. You can't think through Shakespeare, you have to speak it. And listen to the rhythm of it and then it takes you over. And to make it sound real you speak as if you believe it. Don't act it. Just be it. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives. — Anthony Hopkins

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities. — Anthony Hopkins

You have to have humor. If you don't have humor and you take yourself seriously, you're dead in the water. You have to be jostled. I love it. You've gotta have a laugh. It's better than working for a living. — Anthony Hopkins

I did get to work with Anthony Hopkins on 'The Human Stain.' If I ever manage to accomplish a quarter of what he's achieved, I'll have had one hell of a career. — Lindsay Lohan

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap. — Anthony Hopkins

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we're dreaming all the time. That's what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls. — Anthony Hopkins

A favorite cast? Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and my wife. — William H. Macy

I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, "It's a good script," I'll do it. I don't plan. I've got a lot of things to do. I'm at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out. — Anthony Hopkins

I'd like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don't. I look in the mirror, and I see me. — Anthony Hopkins

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting. — Anthony Hopkins

I never make conscious decisions. — Anthony Hopkins

I love life because what more is there? — Anthony Hopkins

I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone. — Anthony Hopkins

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen. — Anthony Hopkins

Once you accept the fact that there's nothing to fear, you drill into the primal oil well. I believe when we do things without fear, we can do anything. As long as you don't worry about the consequences ... — Anthony Hopkins

If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone. — Anthony Hopkins

My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker. — Anthony Hopkins

Shakespeare's so bloody difficult, and I don't like failure. You can fail on film, but there's nobody actually there in the flesh to watch you failing. — Anthony Hopkins

I like to work. I don't like to disrupt my equilibrium. I don't like to change my head. I'd rather be a third-rate actor. It's a job, and I'm dedicated in my way. I enjoy it. I'm serious about it. But if it doesn't come off, I'm not going to die. — Anthony Hopkins

Today is the tomorrow I was worried about yesterday. — Anthony Hopkins

I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius. — Anthony Hopkins

My life has been a kind of mystery to me. By all my logical, linear thinking I started out in school as a little boy, I didn't have a clue about anything. What they were talking about in school, couldn't play sports, couldn't learn, and I was bottom of the class. — Anthony Hopkins

Things have changed so much now. Everything is downloaded onto computers. I'm not a computer-savvy guy, but with downloading the movie industry has changed. — Anthony Hopkins

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then. — Anthony Hopkins

There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It's a bit scarier going on stage. — Anthony Hopkins

My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants. — Anthony Hopkins

People ask me how did you choose the part and how did you prepare for this work? I just learned the lines and showed up; I don't know what else to say because that's all I know how to do. — Anthony Hopkins

I've admired Anthony Hopkins for so long, and when I finally got to meet him in person, I became totally immobile and speechless! I stood there looking at him and couldn't say a word. — Bryce Dallas Howard

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can't even comprehend it. It's such an illusion, it's such a strange thing. — Anthony Hopkins

I love traveling. I like to keep moving. I love the big open spaces in America. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm the slowest driver in the world. — Anthony Hopkins

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist. — Anthony Hopkins

There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox. — Anthony Hopkins

As a Welshman that can't sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir - the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself. — Anthony Hopkins

I think it will be, as always, interesting to compare different portrayals of Hitchcock. I'm very honored that I'm playing the same part as Anthony Hopkins. — Toby Jones

In Wales it's brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes 'So what you doing now?' And I go, 'Oh, I'm doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.' And they go, 'Ooh, good.' And that's it. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

Ryan Gosling. He was a good kid, good actor. I like him very much. What was the name of the movie? I've forgotten it. Fracture. — Anthony Hopkins

Mortality is the great rescuer, it finally takes you out of everything, and that makes life good.Read Carl Jung. It makes life richer because this is it; none of us know where we go and this is the fun of it. — Anthony Hopkins

Non-expectation, non-acceptance because the expectation leads to resentment and depression, so I have no expectations. — Anthony Hopkins

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that. — Anthony Hopkins

Danger is the spice of life and you've got to take a risk now and then ... that's what makes life worthwhile. — Anthony Hopkins

I love to read, and so I've been reading everything I can, not intensely, but I love to read so I read "Origin of Species" by Darwin and I can't make head or tail of E=MC squared by Einstein, but I try to baffle my way through that. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough. — Anthony Hopkins

When you're younger you have so many ideas about yourself; everything is important. It's not when you look back, nothing is that important. It's only life. — Anthony Hopkins

I've been very lucky. I've had my problems in the past, I've had my troubles, but you move on. I had a great life and I am really thankful for it. — Anthony Hopkins

We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the boogeyman. — Anthony Hopkins

Getting to share a project with Anthony Hopkins is incredible. It's like watching Da Vinci paint or something - you're reminded why you do what you do. — Evan Rachel Wood

We're just blades of grass, and when we go, we go, we never come back; one life ... maybe that's true. But I tend to believe that this is not all there is. Because my life has been like a shadow of something deeper. And I've experienced that many times. — Anthony Hopkins

I've always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn't believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical. — Anthony Hopkins

I would love to work with Anthony Hopkins; I would love to work with Meryl Streep; I would love to work with DeNiro; I would love to work with Johnny Depp; I'd love to work with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow ... I think she's amazing. — Tara Reid

I think Julianne Moore is very, very good. I've worked with her. We did Surviving Picasso. I remember one scene we did together. She had to have a nervous, a mental, breakdown in this one scene.I didn't have many lines. I just had to make sure I knew I came in on cue all right. And I was just watching her walking though the rehearsal. I thought I know what she's doing, "This is going to be terrific." So they said, "Are you ready" and she said, "Yeah," "Ok, roll the camera." And all in one take. — Anthony Hopkins

I play piano and that's my love. I read and I paint and I compose music, so I've got a pretty full creative life. And it's not because, I'm obsessively creative. — Anthony Hopkins

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use. — Anthony Hopkins

The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god. — Anthony Hopkins

I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called 'Equis.' And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, 'I'm home.' I felt really at peace here. — Anthony Hopkins

My life is not my own business. — Anthony Hopkins

You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later. — Anthony Hopkins

Still, it can be more effective to accomplish what you need to accomplish with the minimum effort. Watch Anthony Hopkins. He doesn't appear to be doing anything. He is so still that you can't see him working, but you are drawn into his character through his very stillness. — Morgan Freeman

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear. — Anthony Hopkins

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air. — Anthony Hopkins

Ask Anthony Hopkins how he makes his characters come to life and he just shrugs. I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be able to do it. As they say: Where ignorance is bliss it's folly to be wise. — Larry Eisenberg

We're always looking over our shoulders, 'what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one - am I making the right career move?' When you're young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose. — Anthony Hopkins