page_title: Anthony Hopkins
section_title: Acting career
hierarchical_section_title: Anthony Hopkins / Acting career
caption_attribution_description: Isabella Rossellini and Anthony Hopkins on location at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin to shoot some scenes for the movie "The Innocent"
context_page_description: Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE is a Welsh actor, composer, director and film producer. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTAs, two Emmys and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. In 1993, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. Hopkins received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and in 2008 he received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
  After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was then spotted by Laurence Olivier who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in 1965. Productions at the National included King Lear, his favourite Shakespeare play. Despite his success in theatre, Hopkins yearned to be on screen. His last stage play was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989.
  In 1968, Hopkins achieved recognition in film, playing Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter. In the mid-1970s, Richard Attenborough, who would direct five Hopkins films, called him "the greatest actor of his generation."
context_section_description: Hopkins made his first professional stage appearance in the Palace Theatre, Swansea, in 1960 with Swansea Little Theatre's production of Have a Cigarette. In 1965, after several years in repertory, he was spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in London. Hopkins became Olivier's understudy, and filled in when Olivier was struck with appendicitis during a 1967 production of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death. Olivier later noted in his memoir, Confessions of an Actor, that
  A new young actor in the company of exceptional promise named Anthony Hopkins was understudying me and walked away with the part of Edgar like a cat with a mouse between its teeth.
  Hopkins was nervous prior to going on stage, but since that night he has relaxed, quoting his mentor: "He [Olivier] said: 'Remember: nerves is [sic] vanity – you're wondering what people think of you; to hell with them, just jump off the edge'. It was great advice." Despite his success at the National, Hopkins tired of repeating the same roles nightly and yearned to be in films. He made his small-screen debut in a 1967 BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. His first starring role in a film came in 1964 in Changes, a short directed by Drewe Henley, written and produced by James Scott and co-starring Jacqueline Pearce. In 1968, Hopkins got his break in The Lion in Winter playing Richard the Lionheart, a performance which saw him nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Although he continued in theatre (most notably at the National Theatre as Lambert Le Roux in Pravda by David Hare and Howard Brenton and as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra opposite Judi Dench as well as in the Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus) he gradually moved away from it to become more established as a television and film actor. He portrayed Charles Dickens in the BBC television film The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens in 1970, and Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC's mini series War and Peace (1972). Making a name for himself as a screen actor, in 1972 he starred as British politician David Lloyd George in Young Winston, and in 1977 he played British Army officer John Frost in the World War II-set film A Bridge Too Far. Both of these films were directed by Richard Attenborough, who described Hopkins as "unquestionably the greatest actor of his generation".
  In 1978 he starred in the psychological horror film Magic about a demonic ventriloquist's puppet. In 1980, he starred in The Elephant Man as the English doctor Sir Frederick Treves, who attends to Joseph Merrick (portrayed by John Hurt), a severely deformed man in 19th century London. That year he also starred opposite Shirley MacLaine in A Change of Seasons and famously said "she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with." In 1983, Hopkins also became a company member of The Mirror Theater Ltd's Repertory Company.
  He remained an enthusiastic member of the company and the Mirror's Producing Artistic Director Sabra Jones visited him in London in 1986 to discuss moving Pravda to New York from the National Theatre. In 1984, he starred opposite Mel Gibson in The Bounty as William Bligh, captain of the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty, in a retelling of the mutiny on the Bounty. In 1986 he starred in David Hare’s production of King Lear, Hopkins' favourite Shakespeare play, at the National Theatre. In 1989, Hopkins made his last stage performance in a West End production of M. Butterfly. In 1992 he portrayed Professor Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  Hopkins starred opposite Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day (1993), a film set in 1950s post-war Britain, that the BFI ranked the 64th greatest British film of the 20th century. Starring as the butler Stevens, Hopkins named it among his favourite films. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. The previous year he starred with Thompson in Howards End, another film that received enormous critical acclaim, with critic Leonard Maltin 
caption: Isabella Rossellini and Hopkins in Berlin to shoot scenes for The Innocent (1993)
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