Anthony Hopkins Quotes

I'm composing and writing music.

I don't have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don't know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don't know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don't think you need all that stuff.

If you're in a successful play and the play is working well - I mean successful because the audiences like it, the audiences respond well - it's a pleasure.

I'm having a great life. And I'm 73 and they still phone me up and ask me to do a job here and there.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

It created in me a yearning for all that is wide and open and expansive. Something that will never allow me to fit in in my own country, with its narrow towns and narrow roads and narrow kindnesses and narrow reprimands.

I look in the mirror and I see the lines, but I don't care. It's a good time. I don't know why it's such a good time, but it's a good time.

I was trundling around with my inadequacies, and inner pain and loneliness. I yearned, desperately, to be something. I yearned to get out from where I was ... some deep discontent within myself, actually some deep dislike of myself.

When I was a younger actor, I was very immersed in it, very "method" and all that. Now, I don't give a hoot.

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.

People ask, 'Should I call you Sir Hopkins?' But I say, 'No. Call me Tony,' because it's too much of a lift-up.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.

Relish everything that's inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

Non-expectation and acceptance. Because expectation leads to resentment and depression, so I have no expectations.

We're all different. Some people are musicians, some people are actors, some people are agents and some people are accountants... We're all different.

I don't have many friends; I'm very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated and I've never been really close to anyone.

My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots - cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it's just acting.

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.

I think one of the things you have to have is a respect for the camera, a real respect, and a real love for it, and to really, when I say take it seriously, quote 'seriously', I mean not patronize it. It's a big mistake to patronize it and think it's a third rate medium, because it's not, it's a great art form.

I wanted revenge; I wanted to dance on the graves of a few people who made me unhappy. It's a pretty infantile way to go through life - I'll show them - but I've done it, and I've got more than I ever dreamed of.

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

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

I can't stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don't like the way I'm doing it they can get someone else.

I'm just an actor. It's the way the script is written, and it's easy. I don't have think about it. When you receive the script, you know pretty well how to play it, apart from little technicalities like the accent.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don't, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that's fine, but I can't work like that.

It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.

I wanted to be a musician but I didn't have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

Oh yes. I'm an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

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

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I could stay making nice safe BBC movies for the rest of my life, so I decided to risk it. It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

I love life because what more is there?

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

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.

Acting is constricted because you have the lines. But I improvise with it and what I learn on the set. I improvise rhythms and just changes.

I don't have any expectations about my films. If they're good, they're good - if they're not, they're not. About 10 years ago, I remember going to see one of my movies - I can't even remember which one now - and everyone was jumping up and down, getting excited, saying what a great film it was going to be. We all went in and watched it, and it was the slowest movie I've ever seen. The next day, the reviews were terrible and half the studio was fired.

I do my job, and I do what I’m paid to do and I’m always prepared. I prepare by learning the text so well that when I show up, I’m relaxed and the performance sort of happens. Now whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know... Whatever I say is going to sound very egocentric and self centered anyway so I’d better shut up.

And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it's not you going through it.

I’m not being cynical, but when you’re doing a movie you have a number of choices as an actor. Then you see it all cut together and all of those precious little pieces you put in are maybe on the cutting room floor. So, you don’t have that much control. You have very little control, in fact.

We're all caught up in circumstances, and we're all good and evil. When you're really hungry, for instance, you'll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing - well, maybe that's too strong - but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

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.

I like the good life too much, I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

I don't mind being a commodity. It's given me a good life.

I love to have a laugh. I like to tease people.

Most of my last 30 years have been like that. Results and manifestations of things I'd dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man. I realized it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, "This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I'd pictured it." My whole life has been like that and I'm fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go.