A biography for Anthony Hopkinshasn’t been written yet.
“I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.”
“I've got a great sense of humor.”
“I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.”
“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.”
“I've got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I've done it.”
“We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.”
“I don't know why they gave me a knighthood - though it's very nice of them - but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don't.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it.”
“I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.”
“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.”
“I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.”
“I'm a pretty tough guy, you know. I'm a pretty hard man. I've got a lot of compassion, but I don't waste time with people.”
“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.”
“My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.”
“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.”
“Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.”
“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.”
“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.”