I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.
I’ve been composing music all my life and if I’d been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.
I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.
For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.
Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.
I look in the mirror and I see the lines, but I don’t care. It’s a good time. I don’t know why it’s such a good time, but it’s a good time.
Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.
People ask, ‘Should I call you Sir Hopkins?’ But I say, ‘No. Call me Tony,’ because it’s too much of a lift-up.
I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called ‘Equis.’ And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, ‘I’m home.’ I felt really at peace here.
Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he’s terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he’s a terrific actor.
I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.
I’m one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you’re doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.
As a Welshman that can’t sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir – the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself.
I enjoy painting. I don’t know if I’m good at it, but I paint. I paint very quickly.
I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart – they were wonderful actors. They didn’t act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.
I still don’t know what the film was about because all I remember is a whole lot of technical dialogue about a body in a suitcase.
On his Hannibal Lector mask: I’ve got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.
When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth.
I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.
It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.