Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins

Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor, director and film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992 and has also received 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 renown 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." In 1991 he portrayed Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He reprised the role in its sequel Hannibal and the prequel Red Dragon. Hopkins was nominated for four other Academy Awards for the films, The Remains of the Day (1993), Nixon (1995), Amistad (1997) and The Two Popes (2019). Other notable films include: 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), The Elephant Man (1980), Howards End (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Legends of the Fall (1994), Meet Joe Black (1998), The Mask of Zorro (1998), as well as Thor (2011) and its 2013 and 2017 sequels. In 2015, he starred in the BBC television film The Dresser, a role he called "the highlight of my life." In 2016 and 2018, he starred in the HBO television series Westworld.

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