by
Paul Fischer
Anthony Hopkins was in a surprisingly
good mood promoting Red Dragon in a New 
York
hotel. Casually attired in leather jacket and jeans, the Oscar wining
Brit begins by impersonating Red Dragon producer Dino De Laurentiis, with
deep Italian accent to match. "We'll talk later about doing another one
eh? Five more." Laughing, Hopkins, who returns as the famed cannibalistic
serial killer in the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, says to
the producer that he really cannot conceive of doing more than three in
total. But he concedes never say never. "I honestly don't know. I guess
anything is possible; I'm like putty," Hopkins says smilingly. The actor
clearly doesn't like to talk much about his work. Hopkins despises the
celebrity aspects of his life as an actor, does the minimum of press required
to promote a film and speaks in short, staccato sentences. For Hopkins,
as masterful an actor he is, it remains a job and always has. "I live
in Los Angeles, but never read the trades so I don't know what's going
on and I'm very removed from it and really removed from the business of
acting. I trust that my agent is going to come up with a script every
so often, and he does. I have lunch with him once every six weeks maybe
and we talk on the phone and that's my connection with Hollywood," confesses
Hopkins. "And I love that, but I just don't have it in my nature to become
part of an acting community. I don't have actors as friends. I like actors,
but I don't hang out with any so I'm physically and mentally detached,
and always have been. Even while acting in London, I never hung out with
actors. One or two friends were actors, but I'm completely divorced from
it all."
Even when it comes to analyzing his work in Red Dragon, Hopkins
finds it difficult to remain close to a film once it is done. "It's a
job, it's what I do, and I'm really removed from it. I see my face on
the poster and think: 'Oh'! But I don't have a connection with it maybe
because the film has been done and it's on now. I feel disconnected from
it which is a good feeling, because once you get involved in all this
stuff and believe what they say of you, then you go mad. So you lose 
balance,
and perspective and you forget to live."
Perhaps that is why he left England for California; to live a little? "I just like walking on the beach. For what it's worth, you can see that I'm not that attached to the acting business. I don't talk it, I don't discuss acting. My only connection with the acting mechanism is I go on Saturday mornings to teach a class in Santa Monica. I don't actually teach but the actors get up and they perform scenes. I help them out, I help to clear away the unnecessary stuff and I get a good feeling about that." This is what makes Hopkins feels content, teaching these Saturday morning acting classes, during which he teaches them "simplicity, directness and clarity, intention within scenes, which I enjoy; it brings
out some kind of director in me, but I have no desire to be a director." While he has directed before, no more, he insists, "Because I'm an actor. You have to be up first thing in the morning to be a director, and the last to leave the set at night. An actor's life is easy compared to the other one. I directed one film and they said the most exciting part is the editing. I went into the editing room and after two days, I thought I'd go insane. I couldn't look at those scenes anymore. They said this is the new high tech equipment, the new video splicing machine. They said, 'Go to frame 46.' To which I replied 'You do it'.
As reticent a star as he is, Sir Anthony has emerged as a cultural icon,
thanks to his creation of Hannibal Lecter, a character for which he won
an Oscar over 10 years ago. Reluctant to step into Lecter's shoes once
more, he was attracted to Ted Tally's script which reveals
the origins of Lecter's killing spree and his capture by an FBI agent,
Will Graham, played by Edward Norton. Graham ultimately
enlists Lecter's help to find another serial killer [Ralph Fiennes].
Hopkins admitted that it was fun doing Red Dragon, despite his
reluctance to come on board. "And I voiced my reticence to my agent. He
said, 'Well, it'll be good. Why not do another one?' I said, 'Well, I've
done two.' He said, 
'Well,
Ted Tally is writing the script' and I said, 'Yeah, I know. He's a good
writer. Let me see the script.' And I read the script. I wasn't that reticent.
I wasn't saying no. I just wanted to think about it. I don't like playing
hard to get because I don't think actors can afford to play hard to get.
I told my agent, 'Just sign the deal.' 'Should we ask for more money?'
'No, no, do it.' So, I read it and I said, 'Yeah, it's good. Really good.'
So I met Brett Ratner here in New York last June, who
had been primed by Dino to talk me into doing it. He was very nervous.
He sat down and said, 'We could have a good movie.' I said 'Yeah,
okay. I'll do it.'"
As long as Hopkins could do it differently.
"I wanted to play it with more menace, more danger and much more rage because, after all, he has put me in here for life and I'm really not very happy about it. I also wanted to reveal to the Will Graham character and to the audience, that behind the mask of this charming man is this lethal killer who's dangerous. You don't mess around. You don't go out to dinner and have a friendly chat with him. I just wanted to show that vicious, really horrifying side of him." Through the film, Hopkins says, he was tempted to go back "to the cutesy, almost campy side of it sometimes because it's very tempting to do all of that and get a cheap laugh here and there. But Brett was very strong about that and insisted on us keeping our course." While he didn't feel it necessary to re-watch Silence of the Lambs in preparation for this prequel, it accidentally came in handy. "It was on television a few weeks before I started, so I watched it again and I think I watched all of it. I thought, 'Oh, so I've got to go back there'. The difference being that my voice has deepened since then because I'm older. I've been working out for the last 10 years. I've been doing weights and all that, working out regularly so my chest cavities are bigger therefore my voice has dropped, and you get more baritone. So, I thought that I can't really strain and make an effort by trying to produce a tenor sound, which was the original Hannibal Lecter, so I produced the same almost monotone which wasn't difficult. I didn't want to go too far into the strength and try to become 12 years younger, but I cut down on the weight training and tried to flatten out here," he says pointing to his stomach.
Hopkins is next set to shoot a new film in Italy and then hopes to play Ernest Hemingway. He still gets great pleasure in driving cross country across America. "I very much want to go to Yosemite and eventually explore Alaska." Long drives help him forget about Hollywood and acting, and that is how he likes it.