Anthony Hopkins Quotes

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.

I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.

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.

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.

On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear.

That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

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.

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.

When I was a young guy, I knew everything.

Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on.

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.

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.

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.

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 am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

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.

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.

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.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense.

.. I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

Keep low expectations and life gets pretty good.

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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

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

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

There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It's a bit scarier going on stage.

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

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

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.

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

Guilt is the thief of life.

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.

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.