Time.news – At 85, he has become the oldest actor to win an Oscar, he owns two, and in the film “Armageddon Time”, his last coming-of-age drama, he plays a grandfather with the attitude of someone who knows still have a whole life ahead of you while all cautions and fears are behind you.
Il Paìs celebrates the evocative and “unpredictable” talent of English actor Anthony Hopkins, who is reputed to be “meticulous and obsessive with details” while in reality he appears “rather the opposite”, as from the perspective of his 85 years “seems the standard bearer of relaxation and fun”, inspired by a single motto: “Believe, believe and believe in yourself”. Always.
In the interview with the Spanish newspaper he speaks of his “slow development childhood” with a “mind not trained for academic studies”, “I was a very lonely boy, I had no friends” but believes that “it was a choice. Something in my nature kept me alone. But I had a creative side and at 17 I decided I was sick of being called a fool. I said to myself: ‘I have to do something in life. I don’t know how, but he’ll become an actor‘. And so it was. My grandfather, my mother’s father, encouraged me from an early age: ‘Don’t listen to people. Do what you like. Have faith in what you want to do and you will see that you will achieve it,’ was his advice ”.
On the delicate historical present we are going through, Hopkins reflects: “I think we should live with a greater sense of hope. Just 60 years ago, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world came to the brink of nuclear war and an agreement was struck. I think that in this new crisis we have reached a point where hope is glimpsed, because it is the only thing we can hold on to”.
“We will return to the world order of 2018 and return to peaceful coexistence. If not, it will be the end of the planet, of its civilization. Although I doubt anyone would be crazy enough to end this. We survived the pandemic, the world he got through World War II, Hitler… Cynics will say that all this is useless. But we must have hope. If we forget it, it will all end.”
On December 31, the last day of the year, the English actor will turn 86, an overlap with New Year’s, which Hopkins describes as follows: “My Christmas present has always coincided with my birthday present! But now that I’m 86 on New Year’s Eve the whole country, the whole world will celebrate my birthday.” A good feeling.