When Anthony Hopkins won his second Best Actor Oscar in 2021 at the age of 83, people were mad that it wasn’t Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Fair enough, but what I did notice is that as upset as people were by Hopkins’ shocking win, making him the oldest winner in history for an Oscar in an acting category, people also agreed that Anthony Hopkins was at least a deserving winner for The Father.
That speaks partially to how overwhelmingly beloved he is by not only audiences, but by the industry that has seen him move effortlessly back and forth between complex leading men and meaty character roles that draw from Hopkins’ consistently stunning talent for mimicry.
Offhand, can you name an actor who has played more real-life people than Anthony Hopkins?
His filmography includes Pablo Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, Burt Munro, Pope Benedict XVI, Richard Nixon, John Quincy Adams, Adolf Hitler, Dr. John Harvey Kellog, C.S. Lewis, Sigmund Freud. I don’t think such a person exists. Especially someone who is so profoundly distinctive as an on-screen presence, and yet can disappear completely into a wide range of real-life figures. Every single one of those performances that I just mentioned had a real shot at making this column.
Taken as a whole, the films of Anthony Hopkins can make for one the best movie marathons you’ve ever had. It can take you to every imaginable genre and level of quality. The one consistency in all of them, which I’ll be covering with this chronological list of his 7 best roles, is that Hopkins himself is, even in his worst movies, fantastic.
7. Magic (1978)
Director: Richard Attenborough
Directed by Richard Attenborough (John Hammond in Jurassic Park) of all people, Magic is perhaps the earliest Anthony Hopkins performance that people seem to be familiar with. Hopkins had been in a number of films by this point, but Magic was a notable leading role in a relatively high-profile horror movie that performed well in theaters. Hopkins had to be empathetic and frightening from one moment to the next in this grim story of a failed magician who develops an increasingly dark relationship with a ventriloquist dummy he finds by chance.
In a film featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith, a screenplay by William Goldman from his own novel, and Attenborough’s excellent direction (it’s just weird to see him behind a horror movie), we follow along an actor who manages to make Corky Withers pitiable and deeply unnerving. Magic also has an awesome supporting cast in Ed Lauter, Burgess Meredith, David Ogden Stiers, and the underrated Ann-Margret. It’s one of those situations where you’re seeing a solid story told by some of the best in the business at that point in time. Magic is a good premise that’s executed with unique style and dread, anchored by Anthony Hopkins establishing a particular talent in this particular genre.
6. The Elephant Man (1980)
Director: David Lynch
Forgetting that Anthony Hopkins had serious doubts over David Lynch’s ability to finish the film, The Elephant Man is one of his best. It’s a fascinating contrast to Magic, if you want to compare two of his best characterizations at this stage of his career. It’s remarkable to think that Silence of the Lambs is still a full decade away.
In yet another example of Anthony Hopkins playing a real-life figure, Dr. Frederick Treves really was the doctor to the tragic, fascinating, and by all accounts intelligent and charming John Merrick, known very unkindly as The Elephant Man. They were also, as far as I can tell, close friends, which Lynch’s moving, sometimes frighteningly bizarre film makes an important part of the story that’s told here. Hopkins’ portrayal of Treves is that of a man who is indeed compelled to learn more about the extraordinary medical deformities of Merrick, but who also comes to love and care for him as a friend. It’s the kind of compassion we all ideally want from our doctors, and it’s another example in David Lynch’s larger body of work where you have deep, profound, and very human love running as a current through the utter madness of everything else that’s going on.
The Elephant Man has so much going for it, including one of the most understated and moving performances of Anthony Hopkins’ career.
5. 84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
Director: David Jones
Hopkins never worked with David Lynch again, but 7 years later he was back for another film produced by Mel Brooks and his production company Brooksfilms. It’s hard to imagine two movies more different than The Elephant Man and 84 Charing Cross Road.
Yet both feature Anthony Hopkins playing a person who actually existed, as does Anne Bancroft, playing theater actress Madge Kendal in The Elephant and the late playwright and author Helene Hanff in this film based on a book about Hanff’s correspondence with Frank Doel and his small antique bookstore in London. The entire book is nothing more than a short introduction and a series of letters between Hanff, a voracious lover and collector of literature, and Doel, a very reserved, about-what-you’d-imagine man who runs an aging bookstore during England’s rocky World War II aftermath. As the years go on, their friendship develops into something as valuable and beautiful as their relationships to the people in their everyday lives. Never anything more than platonic, Helene and Frank create a warmth in their words that is acted out with almost bittersweet attention to detail by Bancroft and Hopkins as the more understated of the two. His performance is a kind, gentle contrast to Helene’s and Bancroft’s brashness.
84 Charing Cross Road ends with Frank and Helene never meeting, as was unfortunately the case in their actual lives. Hopkins’ performance in particular makes that inevitably almost sorrowful by the end. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get through this one without crying.
4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme
The first of Anthony Hopkins’ two Best Actor performances. There are several reasons why The Silence of the Lambs, based on Thomas Harris’ novel about a young FBI agent who teams up with a notorious serial killer to catch a man who is skinning young women for a very specific purpose, is one of the most beloved films released in my lifetime.
It also doesn’t hurt having Jonathan Demme’s unique style building tension, utilizing unique ways to look at the world of this film, and focusing on characters while still moving the narrative at a sometimes-breathless pace.
But if you had to choose a single element that makes The Silence of the Lambs truly special, I think you’d have to say it’s Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecture. A man of impeccable manners and staggering brilliance who also happens to kill and eat people he finds rude. It’s as scary as it is interesting and very, very darkly humorous. Hopkins, particularly when he’s sharing the scene with Jodie Foster, conveys a character that gives us everything we need, while also pushing the full limit of our imagination of what this guy is all about. All the more remarkable is that Anthony Hopkins does all of this with less than 20 minutes of screentime.
3. The Remains of the Day (1993)
Director: James Ivory
A butler (Anthony Hopkins) is so profoundly dedicated to his cause and Nazi sympathizer master (James Fox) that he forgoes innumerable, priceless opportunities to be with the people he loves. This is the main thread of The Remains of the Day, which takes its time depicting the life of Hopkins’ James Stevens over a period of 20 years, from the very beginning of World War II to 1958. The Remains of the Day is sort of an exercise in deep frustration. Stevens’ refusal to let himself find his own happiness leads to missing his own father’s final moments, and most prominently, it causes him to miss a potential relationship with a coworker named Sarah Kenton, played to the sort of perfection you imagine Emma Thompson bringing to a role like this.
This is another film in which Anthony Hopkins benefits from the incredible chemistry he creates with an equally brilliant costar. Their relationship combined with the film’s depiction of the rising tide of fascism and pure evil makes for a drama that’s far more energetic than you might initially believe. This is a gradual period piece, yet it has a loudness to its depiction of urgency, loss, regret, repression, and dignity that makes it one of the best movies of this type from this time and place.
2. Titus (1999)
Director: Julie Taymor
While most people will say Anthony Hopkins is at his scariest in The Silence of the Lambs, I think his role as Titus Andronicus in the surrealist 1999 Shakespeare adaptation Titus is much more frightening. It’s easy for me to imagine the depths of vengeance that can claim a human being who is driven mad by the kind of rage that has the potential to poison everything it touches.
The basic premise of the original Shakespeare play concerns a roman general (Hopkins) and his family being targeted by the calculating, ruthless Queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange is not surprisingly fantastic in director Julie Taymor’s 1999 film), after the former killed the son of the latter at the end of a brutal, drawn-out conflict. Circumstances soon put Titus at a severe disadvantage against a woman who soon becomes the Queen of Rome. Much of this story, which has more going on than I’m covering, is spent on her dedicated destruction of the entire Andronicus family. This is an infamous story of revenge and the consequences of not being able to find peace within yourself.
It’s Anthony Hopkins’ performance as a proud general brought to madness that makes Titus such an extremely impacting story. Another film with so many good performances, production design choices, and sense of scale and grandeur, in which a performance by Anthony Hopkins gives the whole endeavor an added weight and strength it might not have otherwise.
1. The World’s Fastest Indian (2006)
Director: Roger Donaldson
We’re wrapping up with 2006’s The World’s Fastest Indian, keeping in mind that Hopkins has nearly 20 years of powerful performances to go through beyond the year of the movie’s release. The fact that we’re stopping here with this biopic about the immensely amiable, one-of-a-kind New Zealand speed bike racer Burt Munro is a testament to Hopkins’ seemingly endless career of worthwhile performances. Even as we stop in 2006 with 7 films from his career, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are several other great Anthony Hopkins movies that didn’t make my cut. His work is a subject that almost any film lover can talk about for a very long time.
The World’s Fastest Indian is an underdog story concerning Munro’s efforts to get the United States to at least attempt a land speed record with his modified motorcycle at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Hopkins creates a portrayal that certainly seems like it was drawn from the very real details of Munro’s personality and life. Our protagonist is eccentric, quite possibly a genius, and determined to the point of mania to make his dream come true.
It’s corny to say the indomitable spirit of The World’s Fastest Indian’s real-life protagonist gets to you in the best way possible, but it does, and that’s in large part because Anthony Hopkins can build some very unique notes around a relatable notion of humanity in its all weirdness, heavy flaws, and spectacular luck that at times feels like magic.
Artists like Anthony Hopkins, through their work, really does make it all feel like magic, if only for a moment. This undercurrent can be found in so much of what he’s put on the screen for 56 years and counting.
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