Anthony Hopkins Quotes

Living with reality is a very good trick, it gives you tremendous freedom and it changes the structure of the molecules of your soul by living with reality because you don't expect anything anymore. Which is a weird paradox.

Women never really care to face the truth when their hearts are involved.

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.

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.

There are people who are convinced supernatural forces are at work, but I've no idea. I suspect 'possession' might be a psychological thing, like schizophrenia. We all think we know things, but we don't know a damn thing. Whether God exists, why we're here... Nobody really knows any of it.

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

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.

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.

I love roller coasters. I don't get a chance often, but I've gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.

I'm always cast in these strange men... that's not me, really.

I became an actor because I didn't know what else to do. Academically, I wasn't good.

Getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

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

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.

Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

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

I was hell bent on destruction... it was like being possessed by a demon.

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.

The trick is not to get too fanatical about getting the accent too accurate because then that becomes a mask. What I try to do is just painting and sketching some of the sounds without obliterating my own voice.

Some nights you might go through an entire performance and not feel a thing, and the audience may have a much better time, 'cause if you're enjoying yourself on stage too much, they're having a terrible time because they can't hear you. And if you're a woman your mascara's running.

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it. I think we ask too many questions of ourselves. We make too much importance of stuff. But I do say to actors when I have taught in classes, or when I sometimes do a talk to a group. I'll say, “If I never acted again, the world wouldn't stop, nor would it stop if I didn't stop acting. That's how important it is. I know it [seems] important when you're young. But I say, “Lighten up. Don't take it all so seriously.” All the gurus and teachers will take your money and run.

I enjoy painting. I don't know if I'm good at it, but I paint. I paint very quickly.

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.

I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page sunrise over the desert and masses of a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

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

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don't want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can't do it anymore. And that's what I want to do.

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

I just remember Kathy Bates getting on the stage and "The Oscar goes to Anthony Hopkins." I looked around, because I really thought Nick Nolte would get it. I really thought Nick would get it. I was very surprised. It was neck and neck with Nick Nolte and myself. So I really was expecting that to happen, and I went in there without any expectations.

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.

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.

I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.

I've got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I've done it.

I was born in the same town as Richard Burton, the actor, and I saw him, he used to come - he and his wife drove by in the car in my father's shop and Burton would come home from Hollywood and ask him for his autograph, and I thought, I want to be like him. And that's all I said to myself, I want to be like that. I want to get out of this environment of my own empty mind.

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

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

At my age, any day above ground and vertical is a good day.

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.

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.

Guilt is the thief of life.

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

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.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

I'm not a health freak. I just work out every day.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.

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.

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