Middle Age Hollywood

Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his chilling performance as the monstrous Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, is co-starring in another horror classic: The Wolfman.

This time, co-star Benicio Del Toro wreaks bloody havoc as the werewolf, while Hopkins plays his father.

Why we love those scary movies.
"I'm not a psychologist, but at the back of it I think there is a feeling that everything is uncertain, there is no guarantee of anything and that causes us great fascination and fear. So we look into the dark side of ourselves and the world. I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, the dark side of one's nature, and have fun with it. What happens if you don't address the darkness in you? You become repressed, depressed and suicidal."


The secret to acting.
"It's very easy. If you'd asked John Wayne he'd have probably said, 'Well, you just go to Monument Valley and get on a horse.' Acting is very, very simple. That's the trick great American actors have had. John Wayne didn't have to act, he just rode in. Gary Cooper, all those guys were smart. They didn't try to do too much."


His advice to wannabes.
"I say just get up and do it. Don't do all this preparation. Don't waste time worrying about it, looking over your shoulder. But when you're a young actor it's not easy to do that because you always want to analyze because you're very insecure. If I could revisit my past, I would say to myself, 'Don't think too much, just get out there and do it.'"


Don't look for him on Broadway.
"It's boring to do the same role night after night in a theater. I think it was Judy Dench who said the best thing about doing a play is getting the phone call from the director, 'They want you!' So you go on stage and think, 'This is it!' Then the reviews come in and if they're decent, you go 'God, I've got nine more weeks of this!' You go into the same routine. 'Can I have my keys to the dressing room? Any mail?' Then you go on stage and you've got cell phones going off in the audience and traffic outside passing by. I'd rather not."

What's he's learned about making it in a tough town.
"You feel uncomfortable if you are competitive. I know people who are competitive and they are not easy to be with. I remember one director saying he never made a mistake. I thought, 'Good for you. Don't join the human race.' It's good to be ambitious if you want to be successful, but at a certain time you have to stop. I've been very lucky. You have to work really hard and dream big dreams, and then you have to let go of the rocket fuel or otherwise it will burn you out. I know a few actors my age or a little older who still live in the past with bitterness and regret."

Which is not to say he's a wimp.
"We're living in such a nanny age now. Everyone's so coddled and we've lost strength. I come from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves and they just got on with it. That's my credo, 'Get on with it.' I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like wasting my time with naysayers. Life's too short."

What keeps him going.
"I think you have to be sure every time you get out of bed to be grateful for another day. There are no guarantees. I used to have a fear of failure when I was young. You can't live with that. Nor can you live with an insatiable desire for success because that's just as bad and as crippling. That's toxic. I may have won an Oscar and been knighted, but 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."

Advice to Oscar winners.
"You can't become the Oscar. You can't become what you think you have to become when you get it. If you do that, you've succumbed to the lords of madness. The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are God. You look around and think, 'Oh, hide them from sharp objects.' I've witnessed some lunatic people in this business. You have to take it with a sense of humor and stay sane."


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