Getting Academy Award winner Benicio del Toro to play The Wolfman was a big coup for the horror remake. It was in fact the star and producer's clout that convinced Universal Pictures to raid their classic monster library and remake the Lon Chaney Jr. original. Then they got Academy Award winner and knight Sir Anthony Hopkins to play his dad.
Sir Anthony plays John Talbot, patriarch of the tragic Talbot family in Victorian era England. He welcomes his son Lawrence (del Toro) home for the funeral of his other son, this after the loss of his wife while the boys were just lads. You know how the story goes. The same monster that terrorized the departed Talbot bites Lawrence and curses him to transform in the full moon. What's a father to do?
When Hopkins appeared at a press conference to promote The Wolfman, he was already looking like his next character. While playing Odin in the Marvel Studios production of Thor, Hopkins sports a bushy white beard and slicked back hair. Though imposingly godlike, Hopkins was disarming to any reporter who posed a question.
Known for responding only to the simplest directions of "faster" or "slower," Hopkins again took the B.S. out of the craft of acting for which he is so acclaimed. He downplayed the more in-depth analytical suggestions of subtext, and instead opened up about just what makes Sir Anthony so good.
Question: Did you have any concerns about the action scenes you had with Benicio?
Anthony Hopkins: No. I did all my own stunts. [Laughs]
Q: It seems like John Talbot has one thing in common with Hannibal Lecter, that sense of confidence that he projects. For you, is that where aggression begins? Is that sort of a foundation, that confidence, and is that something that you build on when you're sculpting a character?
AH: No. It comes out of expediency, I think a certain coldness. I mean, the relationship between fathers and sons, for example. Hannibal Lecter, that's a long time ago, but fathers and sons are very interesting because through the whole of literature, from Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman to D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, that coldness, that harsh, brutal business of being a father and a son. Most men know about the pain of that, the wound as they call it, the Oedipal wound. My own father was a tough man. He was a pretty red hot guy but he was also cold. He was also slightly disappointed in me because I was not a good kid as a school boy, but I learned from it. I liked that coldness because it was harsh and he taught me to be tough. So I know how to be tough. I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't that. You have to be pretty tough to be an actor and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can't waffle through this business. I use all that power in me as an actor, so it comes to be easy but I'm not evil and I'm not a cruel person but I don't have much time for wimps and people who just say. "Oh, I can't do it." Forget it. The "yes, but" merchants of the world. "Yes, but.. Oh, shut up!" And there's people who have a sense of entitlement, "Oh yes, it's all very well for you." I don't have any time for that. I've no time. Life's too short to screw around like that. So I understand that personality trait. When he says, "Your brother's body was found in a ditch. Have you got the right clothes [for the funeral]?," he doesn't waste time saying "I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry your brother's dead." He's dead. Dead is dead. So it's an interesting foundation to build from and I am drawn to those kinds of characters, those hard characters, Dostoyevsky-like characters. I've played a few of those, not Hannibal Lecters, but people who are like that. And, in a way, I admire it because we are living in such a nanny age now. Everyone's so cockled and we've lost strength. I came from Wales and it is a strong, butch society. We win the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is "Get on with it!" I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold but I don't like wasting my time. Life's too short.
Q: You not only play characters who really embrace their darker, primal urges. You also played very repressed characters like in The Remains of the Day.
AH: That's what happens if you don't address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal.
Q: Which one is more challenging to play?
AH: They're all pretty easy. I played The Remains of the Day, all I did was not move much. See, you're playing the butler. You can't bang doors and say, "My Lord, would you like a cup of tea?" People say, "How'd you stay so so still?" I don't move! Michael Winner was directing Death Wish with Charles Bronson who plays the guy who takes out the killers. Michael went and directed it and he's one of these very outrageous British directors and the studio said, "Michael, you can't give it to Charles Bronson. He doesn't look like a lawyer" because he's supposed to be one. I say, "Why? Stick a pencil in his hand and he's a lawyer, isn't he? And a gun in his pocket." Everyone has stereotypes about it all. How do you play a butler? Just don't move too much. Move gently and quietly. How do you play Hannibal Lecter? Don't move. Just scare people by being still. How do you play the Wolfman? Learn your lines, show up and do it and snarl a bit. Acting is very easy. If you ask John Wayne, how do you do it? Well you just go to Monument Valley and get on a horse and you become John Wayne. Acting is very, very simple when you've been doing it a long time anyway. So, no acting required.
Q: Do you have any advice for a younger generation of students and people who are coming up through the ranks that aspire to do what you've done in acting?
AH: Well, I do. Sometimes I've taught and I've taken classes at UCLA and various other places and I say to young actors, I get a camera in front of them, I say, "Okay, just get up and do it. Don't do all this preparation." I joke with them. I do it with humor. I say, "Don't waste time doing it. Just get up and do it." They do audition pieces from Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, or Arthur Miller or whatever. "Let's just do it! Done!" They do it and I say, "There you are. You can do it. Don't waste time worrying about it and looking over your shoulder." But when you're young, it's not easy to do that because you always want to analyze. So when you're young, you're very insecure. If I could learn with the other kids and revisit my own past, I could say to myself, "Don't think too much. Just get on and do it!" So that's what I tell young actors. "Do it! Have the courage to do it. If you're going to make mistakes, who cares? Don't worry so much." You know, we're always looking over our shoulder at what they will think, what the press will think, am I making the right career move. When you're young, you have to do all that to survive, I suppose. You get to a certain point and you think, ah, to hell with it! Just work and be lucky that you're in work. That's my general philosophy about everything. I'm a lucky guy to be around, you know, 72 years of age, still there fighting for this. Power of personality. Give out the energy and it will come back to you in abundance. But if you go in [wavering], it will all fold. You may as well die. I knew an actor who was quarreling for years and years. He was absolutely eaten up because another actor wouldn't do his off lines in a famous movie called On the Waterfront. "That was 50 years ago," I said, "and you're still going on about it? It's over. It's done. It's over." My life is over. I've done that side. I don't go back to Hannibal Lecter or any of that stuff. I'm here, and that's a tremendous power.
Q: Talking about a metaphorical transformation, and we're in the middle of awards season right now, how much did winning the Oscar and being knighted transform your own life and your career?
AH: Well, I still have to look in the shaving mirror in the morning and see the same old face there so it doesn't change your life that much. But no, it was fun to get the Oscar. It was fun to get a Knighthood. But, you know, you wake up in the morning and the reality is still there. You're still mortal. It's fun to have an Oscar. I remember getting up on the podium and thanking people and saying, "Thank you very much." I thought I can make some bad movies now and it doesn't matter. I've reached to top. But then you go on making more movies. You wake up a few days later and the Oscar's there. I've got it at home in Malibu and it's there. I don't look at it every day and worship it. Sometimes, "Oh there it is." And people say "This is an Oscar." But no, it's nice. It's a great symbol of success or whatever you want to call it. But you can't become the Oscar. You can't become what you think you have to become when you get the Oscar. If you do that, that's the road to madness and the movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are God. If you look around, you go, "Ooooohhhh." Hide them from sharp objects, you know. There are some lunatic people in this business and I've witnessed them. You go to the Oscars and you see something when you're there. You think these people are nuts. So you have to take it with a sense of humor and stay sane.
Q: How much has knighthood and being called Sir Anthony transformed your life?
AH: Well, I get a good table in the restaurant. I don't use it over here. I'm an American citizen, although it was a great honor. It really was a true honor. I've forgotten it. When people call me Sir Anthony, I just think, "Oh, that's a bit odd." But I'm not cynical about it. I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever they want to call me. Somehow I come into a restaurant and it's Sir Anthony and I say okay. When they say Sir Hopkins, I say no because that's wrong. The Americans tend to get it wrong. Americans are funny. They always say, "Oh I want to call you Sir Anthony" and I say, "Okay, be my guest." It doesn't transform your life.
Q: We see you looking like Odin already. What can you tell us about Thor?
AH: I'm supposed to be talking about Wolfman. Just a little side note, I'm enjoying working with Kenneth Branagh very much, a terrific young director. Well he's not that young. He's younger than me. Anyone's younger than me, but he's terrific and I'm really enjoying that.
Q: Have you been reading the comic books?
AH: No. I'm not a great researcher, although I've got the whole Marvel Comics book but I haven't read it yet. It's very dense. I'm not into that culture. Like Wolfman, this is a big cultural thing, isn't it? I mean, these monster movies. I've never been caught up with that.
Q: What about Norse mythology though?
AH: Yeah, I know a little bit about it, not much though. I'm not well read in Norse mythology, more in Greek mythology and Roman mythology but not [Norse]. I'm learning a bit through comic strips now about Odin and all those guys. I know that Thursday is named after Thor and Wednesday is names after Woden/Odin. Interesting stuff. The history of the Vikings is very interesting and the Viking invasions of Europe.
Q: When you read a script, do you make changes often, at least to your own character?
AH: With all appreciation and respect to the writer, there are certain things they may miss because they're on schedule, they've got to rewrite their stuff, so I'm not taking the shine from them. But, there was a scene I'm in the asylum with my son and there were lines that were sort of up in the air, and I thought, "What's the background to this?" So I said to Joe, "I'd like to just rewrite something in that so when I describe to my son how I knocked out my Sikh manservant. I'd like to just build a history into it that Sir John Talbot has been all over the world." He's like the Walter Huston character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He's been everywhere: Australia, New Zealand. He's been up in the mountains of the Andes. He's fought on the waterfronts of Boston Harbor and then San Francisco as a pugilist and bare boxer so he's a man who is scarred by life and has been everywhere. He's a killer. He's a tough, tough man like those Victorians were, those great pioneers who pioneered the West. They were tough. There were killings in the saloons in the great Midwest, those bare knuckle boxers like Bob Fitzsimmons and all those guys. They were tough. So I built that into the script and I said, "That's what I want to do is to build this raucous, vicious man who just survived through sheer will and muscle." My grandfather was like that. My father's father was like that, muscle man, just sheer muscle and tenacity. So I based some of this on my grandfather as well. I think I did that in a scene. I don't know if it's been cut. They may have cut some of the lines. So I built up a historical biography for myself just to give it a bit of dimension.
The Wolfman opens February 12.
Sir Anthony plays John Talbot, patriarch of the tragic Talbot family in Victorian era England. He welcomes his son Lawrence (del Toro) home for the funeral of his other son, this after the loss of his wife while the boys were just lads. You know how the story goes. The same monster that terrorized the departed Talbot bites Lawrence and curses him to transform in the full moon. What's a father to do?
When Hopkins appeared at a press conference to promote The Wolfman, he was already looking like his next character. While playing Odin in the Marvel Studios production of Thor, Hopkins sports a bushy white beard and slicked back hair. Though imposingly godlike, Hopkins was disarming to any reporter who posed a question.
Known for responding only to the simplest directions of "faster" or "slower," Hopkins again took the B.S. out of the craft of acting for which he is so acclaimed. He downplayed the more in-depth analytical suggestions of subtext, and instead opened up about just what makes Sir Anthony so good.
Question: Did you have any concerns about the action scenes you had with Benicio?
Anthony Hopkins: No. I did all my own stunts. [Laughs]
Q: It seems like John Talbot has one thing in common with Hannibal Lecter, that sense of confidence that he projects. For you, is that where aggression begins? Is that sort of a foundation, that confidence, and is that something that you build on when you're sculpting a character?
AH: No. It comes out of expediency, I think a certain coldness. I mean, the relationship between fathers and sons, for example. Hannibal Lecter, that's a long time ago, but fathers and sons are very interesting because through the whole of literature, from Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman to D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, that coldness, that harsh, brutal business of being a father and a son. Most men know about the pain of that, the wound as they call it, the Oedipal wound. My own father was a tough man. He was a pretty red hot guy but he was also cold. He was also slightly disappointed in me because I was not a good kid as a school boy, but I learned from it. I liked that coldness because it was harsh and he taught me to be tough. So I know how to be tough. I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't that. You have to be pretty tough to be an actor and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can't waffle through this business. I use all that power in me as an actor, so it comes to be easy but I'm not evil and I'm not a cruel person but I don't have much time for wimps and people who just say. "Oh, I can't do it." Forget it. The "yes, but" merchants of the world. "Yes, but.. Oh, shut up!" And there's people who have a sense of entitlement, "Oh yes, it's all very well for you." I don't have any time for that. I've no time. Life's too short to screw around like that. So I understand that personality trait. When he says, "Your brother's body was found in a ditch. Have you got the right clothes [for the funeral]?," he doesn't waste time saying "I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry your brother's dead." He's dead. Dead is dead. So it's an interesting foundation to build from and I am drawn to those kinds of characters, those hard characters, Dostoyevsky-like characters. I've played a few of those, not Hannibal Lecters, but people who are like that. And, in a way, I admire it because we are living in such a nanny age now. Everyone's so cockled and we've lost strength. I came from Wales and it is a strong, butch society. We win the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is "Get on with it!" I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold but I don't like wasting my time. Life's too short.
Q: You not only play characters who really embrace their darker, primal urges. You also played very repressed characters like in The Remains of the Day.
AH: That's what happens if you don't address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal.
Q: Which one is more challenging to play?
AH: They're all pretty easy. I played The Remains of the Day, all I did was not move much. See, you're playing the butler. You can't bang doors and say, "My Lord, would you like a cup of tea?" People say, "How'd you stay so so still?" I don't move! Michael Winner was directing Death Wish with Charles Bronson who plays the guy who takes out the killers. Michael went and directed it and he's one of these very outrageous British directors and the studio said, "Michael, you can't give it to Charles Bronson. He doesn't look like a lawyer" because he's supposed to be one. I say, "Why? Stick a pencil in his hand and he's a lawyer, isn't he? And a gun in his pocket." Everyone has stereotypes about it all. How do you play a butler? Just don't move too much. Move gently and quietly. How do you play Hannibal Lecter? Don't move. Just scare people by being still. How do you play the Wolfman? Learn your lines, show up and do it and snarl a bit. Acting is very easy. If you ask John Wayne, how do you do it? Well you just go to Monument Valley and get on a horse and you become John Wayne. Acting is very, very simple when you've been doing it a long time anyway. So, no acting required.
Q: Do you have any advice for a younger generation of students and people who are coming up through the ranks that aspire to do what you've done in acting?
AH: Well, I do. Sometimes I've taught and I've taken classes at UCLA and various other places and I say to young actors, I get a camera in front of them, I say, "Okay, just get up and do it. Don't do all this preparation." I joke with them. I do it with humor. I say, "Don't waste time doing it. Just get up and do it." They do audition pieces from Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, or Arthur Miller or whatever. "Let's just do it! Done!" They do it and I say, "There you are. You can do it. Don't waste time worrying about it and looking over your shoulder." But when you're young, it's not easy to do that because you always want to analyze. So when you're young, you're very insecure. If I could learn with the other kids and revisit my own past, I could say to myself, "Don't think too much. Just get on and do it!" So that's what I tell young actors. "Do it! Have the courage to do it. If you're going to make mistakes, who cares? Don't worry so much." You know, we're always looking over our shoulder at what they will think, what the press will think, am I making the right career move. When you're young, you have to do all that to survive, I suppose. You get to a certain point and you think, ah, to hell with it! Just work and be lucky that you're in work. That's my general philosophy about everything. I'm a lucky guy to be around, you know, 72 years of age, still there fighting for this. Power of personality. Give out the energy and it will come back to you in abundance. But if you go in [wavering], it will all fold. You may as well die. I knew an actor who was quarreling for years and years. He was absolutely eaten up because another actor wouldn't do his off lines in a famous movie called On the Waterfront. "That was 50 years ago," I said, "and you're still going on about it? It's over. It's done. It's over." My life is over. I've done that side. I don't go back to Hannibal Lecter or any of that stuff. I'm here, and that's a tremendous power.
Q: Talking about a metaphorical transformation, and we're in the middle of awards season right now, how much did winning the Oscar and being knighted transform your own life and your career?
AH: Well, I still have to look in the shaving mirror in the morning and see the same old face there so it doesn't change your life that much. But no, it was fun to get the Oscar. It was fun to get a Knighthood. But, you know, you wake up in the morning and the reality is still there. You're still mortal. It's fun to have an Oscar. I remember getting up on the podium and thanking people and saying, "Thank you very much." I thought I can make some bad movies now and it doesn't matter. I've reached to top. But then you go on making more movies. You wake up a few days later and the Oscar's there. I've got it at home in Malibu and it's there. I don't look at it every day and worship it. Sometimes, "Oh there it is." And people say "This is an Oscar." But no, it's nice. It's a great symbol of success or whatever you want to call it. But you can't become the Oscar. You can't become what you think you have to become when you get the Oscar. If you do that, that's the road to madness and the movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are God. If you look around, you go, "Ooooohhhh." Hide them from sharp objects, you know. There are some lunatic people in this business and I've witnessed them. You go to the Oscars and you see something when you're there. You think these people are nuts. So you have to take it with a sense of humor and stay sane.
Q: How much has knighthood and being called Sir Anthony transformed your life?
AH: Well, I get a good table in the restaurant. I don't use it over here. I'm an American citizen, although it was a great honor. It really was a true honor. I've forgotten it. When people call me Sir Anthony, I just think, "Oh, that's a bit odd." But I'm not cynical about it. I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever they want to call me. Somehow I come into a restaurant and it's Sir Anthony and I say okay. When they say Sir Hopkins, I say no because that's wrong. The Americans tend to get it wrong. Americans are funny. They always say, "Oh I want to call you Sir Anthony" and I say, "Okay, be my guest." It doesn't transform your life.
Q: We see you looking like Odin already. What can you tell us about Thor?
AH: I'm supposed to be talking about Wolfman. Just a little side note, I'm enjoying working with Kenneth Branagh very much, a terrific young director. Well he's not that young. He's younger than me. Anyone's younger than me, but he's terrific and I'm really enjoying that.
Q: Have you been reading the comic books?
AH: No. I'm not a great researcher, although I've got the whole Marvel Comics book but I haven't read it yet. It's very dense. I'm not into that culture. Like Wolfman, this is a big cultural thing, isn't it? I mean, these monster movies. I've never been caught up with that.
Q: What about Norse mythology though?
AH: Yeah, I know a little bit about it, not much though. I'm not well read in Norse mythology, more in Greek mythology and Roman mythology but not [Norse]. I'm learning a bit through comic strips now about Odin and all those guys. I know that Thursday is named after Thor and Wednesday is names after Woden/Odin. Interesting stuff. The history of the Vikings is very interesting and the Viking invasions of Europe.
Q: When you read a script, do you make changes often, at least to your own character?
AH: With all appreciation and respect to the writer, there are certain things they may miss because they're on schedule, they've got to rewrite their stuff, so I'm not taking the shine from them. But, there was a scene I'm in the asylum with my son and there were lines that were sort of up in the air, and I thought, "What's the background to this?" So I said to Joe, "I'd like to just rewrite something in that so when I describe to my son how I knocked out my Sikh manservant. I'd like to just build a history into it that Sir John Talbot has been all over the world." He's like the Walter Huston character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He's been everywhere: Australia, New Zealand. He's been up in the mountains of the Andes. He's fought on the waterfronts of Boston Harbor and then San Francisco as a pugilist and bare boxer so he's a man who is scarred by life and has been everywhere. He's a killer. He's a tough, tough man like those Victorians were, those great pioneers who pioneered the West. They were tough. There were killings in the saloons in the great Midwest, those bare knuckle boxers like Bob Fitzsimmons and all those guys. They were tough. So I built that into the script and I said, "That's what I want to do is to build this raucous, vicious man who just survived through sheer will and muscle." My grandfather was like that. My father's father was like that, muscle man, just sheer muscle and tenacity. So I based some of this on my grandfather as well. I think I did that in a scene. I don't know if it's been cut. They may have cut some of the lines. So I built up a historical biography for myself just to give it a bit of dimension.
The Wolfman opens February 12.