Top 100 Anthony Hopkins Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I don't like mushiness. I'm a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don't like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting much more open about all that.
Anthony Hopkins
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#7. How do you play Hannibal Lector? Well just don't move. Scare people by being still.
Anthony Hopkins
#8. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone.
Anthony Hopkins
#12. I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.
Anthony Hopkins
#13. 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
#15. I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.
Anthony Hopkins
#16. The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.
Anthony Hopkins
#17. I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.
Anthony Hopkins
#18. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#19. 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
#20. You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.
Anthony Hopkins
#21. I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can't be locked up with anyone for too long.
Anthony Hopkins
#22. Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.
Anthony Hopkins
#23. 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
#24. I watched a film with a very famous, great, great actor, I won't mention his name because everyone loves his memory, but I thought, "God he was acting a lot." Great actor, but nonstop acting. Wall to wall, fitted-carpet acting.
Anthony Hopkins
#25. When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth.
Anthony Hopkins
#26. I found a way into the acting business because I thought, well, it beats working for a living, and so that's what I do. But I still feel like a bit of a stranger in it all. I've never really belonged anywhere.
Anthony Hopkins
#27. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#28. 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
#29. I have a punishing workout regimen. Every day I do 3 minutes on a treadmill, then I lie down, drink a glass of vodka and smoke a cigarette.
Anthony Hopkins
#30. 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
#31. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#33. 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
#34. I still don't know what the film was about because all I remember is a whole lot of technical dialogue about a body in a suitcase.
Anthony Hopkins
#36. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#37. Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."
Anthony Hopkins
#39. I'm married. My wife, Stella - a beautiful woman. She's brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.
Anthony Hopkins
#40. I love the hour in makeup. It gives you time to think and have a cup of coffee. It's my favorite part of the day.
Anthony Hopkins
#41. I enjoy painting. I don't know if I'm good at it, but I paint. I paint very quickly.
Anthony Hopkins
#42. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#46. I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.
Anthony Hopkins
#47. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#48. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#49. Well, everyone likes movies when they're a little kid.
Anthony Hopkins
#50. 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
#52. It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged ... and found wanting.
Anthony Hopkins
#53. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#54. Women never really care to face the truth when their hearts are involved.
Anthony Hopkins
#55. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#56. When you're younger you've got a lot of ideas and you're probably more insecure. I work with young actors now and I see their insecurities, and I make them laugh because I know exactly what they're going through. When you get older you think, it's only a movie after all, it's not brain surgery.
Anthony Hopkins
#57. I was hell bent on destruction ... it was like being possessed by a demon.
Anthony Hopkins
#58. What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that big movies are going to come out and then you see them up in Malibu in the little triplex theatre a week later and you think, this is show business. This is the great movie career. And it's all funded in the shoe box.
Anthony Hopkins
#59. When I direct I try to keep it a unique design of my own. Naturally you're influenced.
Anthony Hopkins
#60. I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense ... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.
Anthony Hopkins
#61. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#62. I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.
Anthony Hopkins
#63. You still wake up sometimes. You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.
Anthony Hopkins
#64. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#66. On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.
Anthony Hopkins
#67. 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
#69. At my age, any day above ground and vertical is a good day.
Anthony Hopkins
#71. I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.
Anthony Hopkins
#73. 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
#74. I don't mind being a commodity. It's given me a good life.
Anthony Hopkins
#75. I've always liked American actors particularly. Because that was my first impression. I was very enamoured of America when I was a kid because we were surrounded by American soldiers during the war, the accent was very strange to me, it was very exotic and very captivating.
Anthony Hopkins
#76. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#77. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#78. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#79. Israel means war and destruction and we Americans are behind this war and I am ashamed of being American.
Anthony Hopkins
#80. Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.
Anthony Hopkins
#81. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#82. If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn't be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven't the patience for them. It's maybe shallow, but that's why I'll never be part of the acting set.
Anthony Hopkins
#83. We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the boogeyman.
Anthony Hopkins
#84. We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.
Anthony Hopkins
#85. 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
#86. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#87. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#88. People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There's a thing in psychology where they think if it's popular, it can't be serious.
Anthony Hopkins
#89. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#90. Non-expectation, non-acceptance because the expectation leads to resentment and depression, so I have no expectations.
Anthony Hopkins
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#94. Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.
Anthony Hopkins
#95. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
#96. When people call me Sir Anthony I just think oh, that's a bit odd. But I'm not cynical about it. Um, I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever name I'm called.
Anthony Hopkins
#97. People don't always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don't advance in life.
Anthony Hopkins
#98. No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.
Anthony Hopkins
#99. 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.
Anthony Hopkins
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