{"id":101843,"date":"2025-11-03T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=101843"},"modified":"2025-11-03T22:44:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:44:00","slug":"anger-and-revenge-anthony-hopkins-on-how-being-bullied-at-school-spurred-him-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=101843","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Anger and revenge\u2019: Anthony Hopkins on how being bullied at school spurred him on"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>12 Minute, 12 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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Not many people can say they\u2019ve been given a private piano recital by Sir Anthony Hopkins.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly what happened when our four-strong BBC team went to interview the double Oscar-winning actor in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

We were in the same room as the man who terrified as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, shattered as a butler in The Remains of The Day and devastated as a dad with dementia in The Father.<\/p>\n

An actor who was cast by Oliver Stone as President Nixon because \u2013 according to Sir Anthony \u2013 the director said \u201cyou\u2019re nuts like Nixon\u201d.<\/p>\n

At a grand piano in a hotel in Beverly Hills, as he plays us a piece he calls Goodbye, it\u2019s clear an artistic soul exudes from his every pore. Haunting notes of music, lines of poetry and Shakespearean verses cascade out of him.<\/p>\n

We were meeting because Sir Anthony\u2019s publishing his autobiography, We Did OK, Kid, an honest and at times upsetting account of a loner who was bullied and written off as a child in Wales and became one of Britain\u2019s finest acting exports.<\/p>\n

He puts his success down to sheer luck, telling me: \u201cI couldn\u2019t take credit for any of it, I couldn\u2019t have planned any of this \u2013 and now at 87, about to turn 88, I get up in the morning and I think, \u2018Hello, I\u2019m still here,\u2019 and I still don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the outside, it looks less about luck and more about his deep understanding of human emotion, as his performances testify. I ask what makes him such an instinctive actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a miracle being alive,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He finds the complexity of human beings \u201cfascinating\u2026 I mean, how can you produce Beethoven, Bach and then Treblinka and Auschwitz?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Anthony has always understood the duality of being human, and it explains his acting range.<\/p>\n

He got his first break on film when the actor Peter O\u2019Toole suggested he audition for the 1968 movie The Lion in Winter, in which O\u2019Toole was playing Henry II.<\/p>\n

At that point, Sir Anthony had been a member of Sir Laurence Olivier\u2019s National Theatre company for several years. But, he recalls: \u201cI couldn\u2019t fit into the British theatre style, I just felt out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also \u201cdidn\u2019t want to be standing on stage holding a spear for the rest of my life, in wrinkled tights, I just wanted to have a bit of a life\u201d.<\/p>\n

He was cast as Richard the Lionheart and couldn\u2019t believe that a baker\u2019s son from Port Talbot was working with Katharine Hepburn.<\/p>\n

The actress, playing his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, gave him \u201cthe best advice I\u2019ve had\u201d as they rehearsed their first scene together. She told him to \u201cjust speak the lines\u2026 Don\u2019t act, just do it\u201d. She also said he was \u201creal good\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hepburn was right, of course. Some classically trained theatre actors, particularly back then, didn\u2019t appreciate how much they needed to adjust their performance for the intimacy of a camera. He did.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t much care for talking about the craft of acting, or certainly the reverence there can be around it, but he shares his method with me: \u201cBe still. Be economic. Don\u2019t act or twitch around, you know, \u2018showing off\u2019 acting\u2026 simplify, simplify, simplify\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Hollywood
Director, Oliver Stone (L) told a reluctant Sir Anthony that he wanted him to play Nixon because he was \u201cnuts\u201d like President Nixon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His performances stand out because he\u2019s an actor of huge emotional depth and psychological insight. Think of him as Dr Treves, the friend and protector of John Hurt\u2019s Elephant Man.<\/p>\n

Or as Lecter, still for me the most terrifying of characters more than 30 years on. The serial killer is a monster but Sir Anthony understood that less is more, on screen.<\/p>\n

Sir Anthony and Jodie Foster both won Oscars for their roles in The Silence of the Lambs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Instead of playing Lecter as obviously monstrous, \u201cyou go the opposite way, you draw back\u201d, he explains. He realised as soon as he had read a few pages of the script that the role was \u201ca life-changer\u201d.<\/p>\n

He writes in his memoir that he \u201cinstinctively sensed how to play Hannibal. I have the devil in me. We all have the devil in us, I know what scares people\u201d.<\/p>\n

He tells me he played Lecter still \u2013 and deadly. So when he was in character opposite other actors, he decided, \u201cDon\u2019t take your eyes off the person. That\u2019s terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

He puts on Lecter\u2019s metallic rasp for me and appears to enjoy repeating his character\u2019s words to Jodie Foster\u2019s Clarice. \u201cYou\u2019re not real FBI,\u201d he almost hisses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s scary,\u201d he says. He\u2019s not wrong. Even in an upmarket LA hotel on a warm autumn afternoon, I\u2019m feeling chilled.<\/p>\n

And what about the famous line \u2013 \u201cI ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti\u201d, which he follows with that vampire-like hiss?<\/p>\n

He explains as a child he\u2019d seen the Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi do the same when playing Count Dracula in the 1931 movie. Sir Anthony decided in the moment of filming to copy it and The Silence of the Lambs director, Jonathan Demme, kept it in.<\/p>\n

Bela Lugosi\u2019s portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1931 horror film influenced Sir Anthony when playing Hannibal Lecter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is startling about the memoir is the disconnect between how the world viewed the young actor and how much it was clearly missing about him. He was bullied at school for what other kids saw as his large \u201celephant\u201d head.<\/p>\n

He was slapped around by teachers who deemed him a complete dunce. Even his parents pretty much wrote him off.<\/p>\n

He believes it was the making of him. It \u201cgave me a core of anger, resentment and revenge\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

But why hadn\u2019t they all noticed his talents? This was a child who was given the 10 volume Children\u2019s Encyclopaedia when he was six (\u201cI was so captivated, I read every one of them\u201d) and became fascinated by astronomy.<\/p>\n

A boy who played the piano, made art and loved Dickens and Shakespeare, quoting from them extensively.<\/p>\n

A school report in 1955 when he was 17 marked \u201cthe turning point\u201d in his life. It was terrible, as usual. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to you?\u201d Sir Anthony recalls his father lamenting. \u201cI said: \u2018One day, I\u2019ll show you, both of you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sir
Sir Anthony, a \u201clittle confused boy\u201d by his own recollection, with his father at Aberavon Beach in 1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Sir Anthony Hopkins, here in 1953, says he was bullied at school, where teachers thought he was \u201cthick\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He\u2019s pleased his parents lived long enough to see him succeed. When he won his first best actor Oscar, for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992, 11 years to the day after his father died, he rang his mother in Wales and said: \u201cI guess I did OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was a rough ride in the early days. He was an alcoholic who picked fights with directors and others. He wasn\u2019t always a good husband to his first two wives. Booze turned him nasty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the ugly side of alcoholism,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt brought out a brutal side of me. I\u2019m not proud of it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anger, he believes, came \u201cfrom inside, my own insecurities, being bullied at school and all the rest of it. I didn\u2019t like authority\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Shutterstock
Sir Anthony (seen with co-star Kate Nelligan) played an alcoholic actor, Theodore Gunge, in the 1974 TV drama The Arcata Promise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then one night in LA in December 1975, almost 50 years ago, he drove his car while in \u201ca complete alcoholic blackout\u201d. When he came to, he realised that he was \u201cout of control\u201d and could have killed someone. He made a phone call to ask for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly, something said, \u2018it\u2019s all over, now you can start living\u2019\u2026 the craving left and it\u2019s never come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

At his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, he had a realisation about everyone else in the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re all misfits like me. Like all of us. We feel we never belong. We feel self-hatred. All of us are the same. I\u2019m not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that feeling of disconnection that shines out of the book.<\/p>\n

He writes that his wife Stella believes he is on the autism spectrum which is \u201clikely right, given my proclivity for memorisation and repetition\u2026 and my lack of emotionality\u201d but he says he prefers the term \u201ccold fish\u201d. I want to know why.<\/p>\n

It seems to have begun as a reaction to the bullying and screaming at him through school and National Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d just stare them out, and that drove them mad,\u201d he recalls. \u201cYou withdraw into yourself and think, \u2018OK you can\u2019t hurt me, can you?\u201d It was, he says, his \u201conly defence\u2026 and that\u2019s a power, you see: I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Sir Anthony does care and we talk a little about the state of the world. It\u2019s at this point in our interview that he becomes his most passionate. He grew up in Port Talbot surrounded by people who had been impacted, even brutalised, by war.<\/p>\n

He played Sir Nicholas Winton, the man who saved hundreds of mainly Jewish children from the Nazis, in the film One Life.<\/p>\n

In One Life, Sir Anthony played Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker who helped to save nearly 700 mainly Jewish children from the Nazis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I ask him about whether he worries about increasing polarisation now, he becomes very animated and intense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has always been a place of utter turmoil. But I think if we go on in this way of hatred\u2026 we are dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s allowed to have an opinion. Nobody can have a different view. That\u2019s fascism. And it\u2019s insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

If he has any advice about it all, it\u2019s to say \u201c\u2018Come on, stop this rubbish, beating each other up over ideas. They\u2019re only ideas and we\u2019re only going to be dead one day\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Anthony Hopkins\u2019 best performances<\/h2>\n

\"ShutterstockShutterstock<\/p>\n

\"BrooksBrooks Films<\/p>\n

\n

Sir Anthony played President Nixon, but told us that, if offered the role of President Trump, he\u2019d say noSir Anthony played the role of Dr Frederick Treves with compassion and said of his character that he \u201cwrestled with his goodness\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask him, as he looks back at his long life, what his biggest regrets are and he\u2019s quick to answer. \u201cPeople I\u2019ve hurt over the years, the stupid things I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s estranged from his only child, his daughter Abigail, who he walked out on when she was just one and he was in the depths of alcoholism.<\/p>\n

He writes that \u201cafter realising I was unfit as a father for Abigail, I vowed not to have any more children\u2026 I couldn\u2019t do to another child what I\u2019d done to her\u201d.<\/p>\n

He has tried to repair their relationship over the years.<\/p>\n

Sir Anthony with his daughter, Abigail (here at the premiere of Little Man Tate in Los Angeles in 1991), describes his estrangement as \u201ca tremendous source of pain\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When he took on the role of King Lear in his 80s, in Sir Richard Eyre\u2019s 2018 film, Lear\u2019s words to his daughter Cordelia struck a painful chord.<\/p>\n

He writes in his new book: \u201cThe line that hit me harder than perhaps any other I\u2019ve ever spoken was \u2018I did her wrong\u2019. Saying those words, I felt deeply, perhaps for the first time in my life, how I had hurt my own daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remembered how as a baby she\u2019d lit up when I walked into the room. I remembered how I said goodbye to her the night I walked out. I remembered how I had tried and failed to win her back later. I remembered how I had given up. And as Lear, but also as myself, I began to cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t want to talk about it in our interview. Poignantly, in this section of the book, he writes: \u201cI hope my daughter knows that my door is always open to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help feeling moved reading this. It\u2019s as if he is trying to send a message to her, hoping against hope that there might be a reconciliation before it is too late.<\/p>\n

\"Playground
Sir Anthony (pictured with Florence Pugh) says playing King Lear made him reflect on the hurt he caused his own daughter, Abigail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At 87, he is looking back, aware he has lived many years longer than he has left to live. \u201cMost of my friends have died, they\u2019re gone, God bless them,\u201d he says. \u201cI hope to be around a little longer. But even that, I\u2019m thinking, \u2018oh well, I had a good time\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He certainly still appears to be having fun. After some early reserve when we first met, he quickly relaxed. When he played the piano, he shared how he had lost two much-loved pianos when his house burnt down in the LA fires earlier this year. \u201cThey were all under the rubble\u201d.<\/p>\n

As we walked through the hotel lobby together, he was spotted by guests and waved happily to them. \u201cI like to say hi because people think actors are special. We\u2019re not at all,\u201d he smiles.<\/p>\n

Sir Anthony credits his third wife Stella Arroyave with helping him overcome \u201cfeelings of anxiety in a way that set [him] free\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whatever he says, it was special to spend a few hours in his presence. He\u2019s an acting legend who\u2019s given us six decades of memorable performances. He\u2019s also a genuine heavyweight who is steeped not just in musical knowledge, but culture, history and philosophy.<\/p>\n

And we end the interview on a philosophical note \u2013 as he recites \u201cThey are not long, the days of wine and roses\u201d from an Ernest Dowson poem and muses on the fleeting nature of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we doing here, what\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0we?\u201d he asks. \u201cWe can\u2019t explain anything about ourselves. We may have fancy ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, scientific ideas\u2026 what\u2019s that all about? We\u2019re nothing finally, and yet we\u2019re everything\u201d.<\/p>\n

We Did OK, Kid by Sir Anthony Hopkins is published on 4 November.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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