110+ Anthony Hopkins Quotes On Acting, Relationships And Regret

Anthony Hopkins is a Welsh actor who has had a long and successful career in film and television. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning performance in The Silence of the Lambs, as well as roles in films such as The Elephant Man, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Thor. He has also won three BAFTAs and two Emmys for his television performances. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Anthony Hopkins on life, love, acting.

Top 10 Anthony Hopkins Quotes

1. 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.
2. No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.
3. A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
4. The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.
5. You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.
10. I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.

Anthony Hopkins Short Quotes

• The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god.
• If you have high expectations you're going to get resentments and all kinds of tension.
• Women never really care to face the truth when their hearts are involved.
• On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.
• You still wake up sometimes. You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.
• How do you play Hannibal Lector? Well just don't move. Scare people by being still.
• My life is not my own business.
• I was hell bent on destruction... it was like being possessed by a demon.
• I don't mind being a commodity. It's given me a good life.
• There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It's a bit scarier going on stage.

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Life

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

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

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

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams. — Anthony Hopkins

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

Keep low expectations and life gets pretty good. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Love

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

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

I love traveling. I like to keep moving. I love the big open spaces in America. — Anthony Hopkins

I love to have a laugh. I like to tease people. — Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Acting

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

I hate taxing my mind with analysis. I'm not a good analyst. I cannot talk about acting. I hate talking about it. I hate talking about analyzing. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting's entertainment. It's not brain surgery. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it. — Anthony Hopkins

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

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Aging

Getting old ain't for the faint of heart. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

There's many a good tune played by an old banjo. — Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Shakespeare

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

Shakespeare's so bloody difficult, and I don't like failure. You can fail on film, but there's nobody actually there in the flesh to watch you failing. — Anthony Hopkins

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

Anthony Hopkins Quotes About Lived

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

I think doubt is a very healthy way to live. — Anthony Hopkins

I've played a lot of parts. But I don't look at my feeling is that this is a job. It's given me a good living. — Anthony Hopkins

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

I said once that if they gave me enough money to read the phone book, I'd do it. I live in a total state of non-expectation. I don't expect things, and I keep my expectations very low about everything. — Anthony Hopkins

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

Anthony Hopkins Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

As a Welshman that can't sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir - the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself. — Anthony Hopkins

I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. "Action" - and then do it. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, "It's a good script," I'll do it. I don't plan. I've got a lot of things to do. I'm at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out. — Anthony Hopkins

When I was a young guy, I knew everything. Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

Whether it's overeating or it's overworking or over-sex or whatever it is, alcoholism, drug addition, we push ourselves to the brink and then pull back because it's kind of exciting. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy. — Anthony Hopkins

I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I'm very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

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

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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. — Anthony Hopkins

What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that, you know, big movies are going to come out, huge movies are going to come out, and then you see them up in Malibu in the little Triplex theater a week later, on the scratch negative, and you think...“This is show business. This is the great movie career. And it’s all finding it in the shoebox.” — Anthony Hopkins

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. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

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

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

The reward is in the doing of it. — Anthony Hopkins

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

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen. — Anthony Hopkins

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

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

Life Lessons by Anthony Hopkins

1. Anthony Hopkins teaches us that hard work and dedication to one's craft can lead to great success.
2. He also shows us that it is never too late to start pursuing your dreams, as he didn't become a successful actor until his late thirties.
3. Lastly, he demonstrates that it is important to remain humble and grateful for the opportunities that come your way.