By ERIC ANDERSSON
Sir Anthony Hopkins knows the secret to staying young: Just flop the two numbers in your age, and no one will be the wiser. “I’m 86. So I’ve reversed it. I’m 68, really,” he says with a twinkle in his eye and a smile crossing his lips. The two-time Oscar winner pauses before adding, in his elegant Welsh accent, “I feel like I’m 68.”
In fact, Hopkins keeps a schedule like a man who’s 28. “I try not to act my age,” he explains. This year alone the esteemed actor appears in three movies, including the newly released drama Freud’s Last Session, in which he plays father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. He also recently wrapped the thriller Locked, channeling his wicked side as a man who traps a would-be-thief in his car. “I’m so lucky to be working at my age,” continues Hopkins, who seems surprisingly nonplussed that he’s offered roles even though he just won his second Best Actor Oscar for The Father three years ago. “They still seem to send me scripts, and I think, ‘Well, good.’ ”
Even if he weren’t in demand, Hopkins would have plenty to do. The prolific painter and music composer has recently added social media stardom to his skill set, gaining a new generation of fans who may have never seen The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter boast about dining on another man’s liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. (That performance earned him Oscar No. 1 in 1992.) To his more than 8 million combined followers on TikTok and Instagram, he shares videos of himself goofing off: There he is dancing the rumba in his kitchen to “Mambo Italiano,” dangling chopsticks from his chin or wiggling his tongue (à la Lecter) while stirring red sauce.
His wife of 20 years, Stella, 67, and niece Tara Arroyave initially talked him into it. “I’m slightly reluctant,” Hopkins admits. “I say, ‘Oh no, not again.’ But I do something silly because we need humor. We need a laugh in life. For good reason, I guess. Life is tough. The world is a savage place, but life has its beauty.”
‘I look at my life and think, “How did this happen?” ’
If Hopkins sounds philosophical, it’s for several good reasons. Stella is working on a documentary about his life; he’s currently writing his own memoir; and as atheist Freud in Freud’s Last Session, he debates the existence of God with C.S. Lewis (played by Matthew Goode). Says Hopkins: “I was fascinated by the argument between the believer and the nonbeliever.”
Hopkins doesn’t think his own trajectory would be possible without a higher power: “I look at my life and think, ‘How did this happen?’ ” Born in southern Wales to Richard and Muriel, who ran a bakery together, Hopkins says he was the “school dummy” and so directionless his father was in “despair.” His dad’s sadness spurred him to action as a teen. “I said, ‘One day I will show you, both of you,’ ” he recalls.
Within 10 years, after studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Hopkins was serving as an under study for Sir Laurence Olivier at London’s Royal National Theatre. But Hopkins’s own distinguished career as a stage actor was nearly derailed by alcoholism. “I was drinking myself to death,” he says matter-of-factly. “One day I had a moment of sheer fright. I got some help. That was 48 years ago.”
At the time, he remembers a voice in his head telling him, “You can start living”—and he has taken that to heart since. Proud of his nearly five decades of sobriety, he fills his days with what brings him joy: working, of course (“It keeps me alive. I love activity,” he says) and spending time with family, including Stella. The secret to his happy marriage? “Just say yes,” he quips. (Hopkins has a daughter, Abigail, 55, from his first marriage to actress Petronella Barker.)
Hopkins’s circle is small, but he likes it that way. “I’m very much a loner. I have very few friends,” he says. “I’m not antisocial. I’m friendly, but I don’t seek out. . . . I enjoy solitude. I know that sounds morbid, but I do enjoy it.”
The peace and quiet give him time to think about the past and contemplate the future. “I’m aware of my mortality,” says Hopkins, who favors an early bedtime and no longer eats sugar. “To be realistic, I know that if I have a few more years of work in me, I can do it,” he says. “I’ve just had a medical checkup. I’m in good shape.”
Overall he feels a sense of gratitude for the good, the bad and everything in between. “I’m just fortunate,” says Hopkins. “I went through ups and downs and depressions and despair and anger and all that stuff, but gradually the last few years [I’ve been] thinking, ‘Well, I’m still here.’ ”
Hopkins (dancing on TikTok in 2022) says he’s happy to “surf the wave” of the Internet fame he’s gained as a result of the self-described “silly” antics he posts (like lip-synching to Frank Sinatra). He also shows his serious side, sharing stories of his sobriety.
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC; PATRICK REDMOND/SONY PICTURES; EVERETT; PETER MOUNTAIN/NETFLIX; EVERETT(2); CHARLIE GRAY/TRUNK ARCHIVE