Anthony Hopkins Quotes

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

Oliver Stone is a great director and I've seen many films over the years, but I try to create stuff out of my own imagination. I want to break all the rules and mess about with it and make a different movie just for the fun of it.

I'm more and more convinced that life is a dream. What has happened to me is surely a dream.

The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don't dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one's nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the bogeyman.

I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

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.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat.

Multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I'm talking about.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

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

Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people - and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn't mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter - but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness.

Hitchcock was such a master of putting on screen things that made you uneasy. Somebody once asked him what frightened him most, and he said the police. He came from a poor background. I think he understood those fears.

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.

I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between.

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.

You have to be pretty tough to be an actor, and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can't waffle through this business.

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.

I drank a lot, but I wouldn't have missed it. I look back on it as sort of dreary enjoyment, because I don't have to be there anymore.

It's very difficult to liberate yourself from what you've learned. You know it's almost impossible because you learn in order to survive.

I come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like being, wasting my time with - life's too short.

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.

If you don't follow through on your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable.

I've reached a happy stage in my life - you can call it "happy" - but I have no expectations anymore. I'm glad I'm not young anymore.

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.

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.

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

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.

If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict, we flirt with death. We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we’re lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us.

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

What a glorious night. Every face I see is a memory. It may not be a perfectly perfect memory. Sometimes we had our ups and downs. But we're all together and you're mine for a night. And I'm going to break precedent and tell you my one-candle wish...that you would have a life as lucky as mine, where you can wake up one morning and say, 'I don't want anything more'. Sixty-five years. Don't they go by in a blink?

I visualized a lot of things happening to me, because I was a lonely kid because I didn't understand anything about school.

A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.

My father wasn't a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher - one of those Victorians, hard as iron - but my dad was tough enough.

I don't know what I believe.

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

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.

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.

I read a lot, that's my main hobby. I've got an iPad which I store books on and I read voraciously. I'm a slow reader but I'm obsessive. I make references, underline things, cross-reference. I'm an autodidact.

I am a bit of a solitude person - a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don't have any major friendships or relationships with people.

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

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can't be locked up with anyone for too long.

My weak spot is that I don't like analyzing so I tend to be a bit lazy; I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he's terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he's a terrific actor.