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Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins Quotes

Actor

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Famous Anthony Hopkins Quotes

“When you're younger you have a lot of ideas and you're probably more insecure, all those things. I work with young actors now and I see their insecurities and I make fun of them. I don't make fun of them but I make them laugh, because I know what they're going through. When you get older you think 'It's only a movie after all, it's not brain surgery.'”

“I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it. I think we ask too many questions of ourselves. We make too much importance of stuff. But I do say to actors when I have taught in classes, or when I sometimes do a talk to a group. I'll say, “If I never acted again, the world wouldn't stop, nor would it stop if I didn't stop acting. That's how important it is. I know it [seems] important when you're young. But I say, “Lighten up. Don't take it all so seriously.” All the gurus and teachers will take your money and run.”

“Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people - and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn't mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter - but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness.”

“When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use.”

“Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.”

“I was born in the same town as Richard Burton, the actor, and I saw him, he used to come - he and his wife drove by in the car in my father's shop and Burton would come home from Hollywood and ask him for his autograph, and I thought, I want to be like him. And that's all I said to myself, I want to be like that. I want to get out of this environment of my own empty mind.”