Anthony Hopkins

Philip Anthony Hopkins was born on 31 December 1937 in the Margam district of Port Talbot, Wales, to Annie Muriel Hopkins and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. One of his grandfathers was from Wiltshire, England. Hopkins has described his father's working-class values as a grounding influence throughout his life. His school years were largely unproductive, as he preferred painting, drawing, and playing the piano to academic study. In 1949, his parents enrolled him at Jones' West Monmouth Boys' School in Pontypool to instil discipline; he later attended Cowbridge Grammar School in the Vale of Glamorgan. In a 2002 interview, he reflected that being a poor learner left him open to ridicule and gave him an inferiority complex. At age 15, he met fellow Welsh actor Richard Burton, whom he later credited as an inspiration, though he clarified that the two were not close friends despite their shared Welsh origins and proximity of upbringing.

Hopkins enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, graduating in 1957, and subsequently completed two years of national service between 1958 and 1960 with the British Army's Royal Artillery regiment. He then moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1963. His first professional stage appearance came in 1960 at the Palace Theatre in Swansea, in a production of Have a Cigarette with Swansea Little Theatre. In 1965, after several years in repertory theatre, he was spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in London. Hopkins served as Olivier's understudy and stepped into the role of Edgar when Olivier was struck with appendicitis during a 1967 production of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death. Olivier later wrote in his memoir Confessions of an Actor that Hopkins walked away with the part like a cat with a mouse between its teeth. Productions at the National Theatre included King Lear, Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In 1985, Hopkins received a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in David Hare's play Pravda. His final stage appearance was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989.

Hopkins made his small-screen debut in a 1967 BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. He portrayed Charles Dickens in the BBC television film The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens in 1970, and played Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC miniseries War and Peace in 1972, earning the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for the latter. In 1973, he again portrayed David Lloyd George in the BBC miniseries The Edwardians, following an earlier portrayal of the same figure in the 1972 film Young Winston, the first of five collaborations with director Richard Attenborough. His television work also includes The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case in 1976 and The Bunker in 1981, both of which earned him Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Later television projects include the BBC film The Dresser in 2015, PBS's King Lear in 2018, and the HBO series Westworld, in which he appeared from 2016 to 2018.

His film career began with a short film, Changes, in 1964, and gained significant momentum with his 1968 appearance in The Lion in Winter, in which he played Richard the Lionheart and received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Subsequent film roles included The Looking Glass War in 1970, When Eight Bells Toll in 1971, A Doll's House in 1973, The Girl from Petrovka in 1974, and Juggernaut in 1974. In 1977, he appeared in Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far as British Army officer John Frost, and in 1978 starred in Attenborough's Magic. David Lynch's The Elephant Man followed in 1980, in which Hopkins played English doctor Sir Frederick Treves. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, and received a second Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as an octogenarian with dementia in The Father in 2020. He also received Academy Award nominations for The Remains of the Day in 1993, Nixon in 1995, Amistad in 1997, and The Two Popes in 2019. Other notable films include 84 Charing Cross Road in 1987, Howards End in 1992, Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992, Shadowlands in 1993, Legends of the Fall in 1994, The Mask of Zorro in 1998, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Thor in 2011, Thor: The Dark World in 2013, and Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. Over the course of his career, Hopkins has received two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005 and the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2008. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama in 1993.

In October 1974, Hopkins brought his stage work to Broadway, playing the psychiatrist Dysart in the original Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, opposite Peter Firth. He noted that when Burton later prepared to take over the role, the two met for the second time, and Hopkins described Burton as a phenomenal actor. For his performance in Equus, Hopkins received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for the 1974–75 season, marking his sole Broadway credit and the capstone of a stage career that had begun in Wales more than a decade earlier.