Top 180 Anthony Hopkins Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, “It’s a good script,” I’ll do it. I don’t plan. I’ve got a lot of things to do. I’m at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out.”

— Anthony Hopkins

52. “I think doubt is a very healthy way to live.”

— Anthony Hopkins

53. “Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.”

— Anthony Hopkins

54. “I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I’d jump in at the deep end and hope that I’d find land somehow, or hope I’d float or survive. That’s more or less the way I’ve gone through my life.”

— Anthony Hopkins

55. “I don’t like mushiness. I’m a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don’t like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I’m getting older, I’m getting much more open about all that.”

— Anthony Hopkins

56. “Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, “Don’t act.” She said, “Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face.””

— Anthony Hopkins

57. “Ryan Gosling. He was a good kid, good actor. I like him very much. What was the name of the movie? I’ve forgotten it. Fracture.”

— Anthony Hopkins

58. “When I was a young guy, I knew everything. Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on.”

— Anthony Hopkins

59. “It’s such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you’re going to do a day’s work and at the end of it, it’s going to be good.”

— Anthony Hopkins

60. “I enjoy painting. I don’t know if I’m good at it, but I paint. I paint very quickly.”

— Anthony Hopkins

61. “Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don’t have to do much – as long as you stay out of the way of others. That’s why it works.”

— Anthony Hopkins

62. “I have dual citizenship, it just so happens I live in America.”

— Anthony Hopkins

63. “I like to work. I don’t like to disrupt my equilibrium. I don’t like to change my head. I’d rather be a third-rate actor. It’s a job, and I’m dedicated in my way. I enjoy it. I’m serious about it. But if it doesn’t come off, I’m not going to die.”

— Anthony Hopkins

64. “I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I’m very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing.”

— Anthony Hopkins

65. “If you have high expectations you’re going to get resentments and all kinds of tension.”

— Anthony Hopkins

66. “I’d like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don’t. I look in the mirror, and I see me.”

— Anthony Hopkins

67. “People ask, ‘Should I call you Sir Hopkins?’ But I say, ‘No. Call me Tony,’ because it’s too much of a lift-up.”

— Anthony Hopkins

68. “There’s a thing that if you – somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it’s a kind of paradox.”

— Anthony Hopkins

69. “There’s many a good tune played by an old banjo.”

— Anthony Hopkins

70. “I found a way into the acting business because I thought, well, it beats working for a living, and so that’s what I do. But I still feel like a bit of a stranger in it all. I’ve never really belonged anywhere.”

— Anthony Hopkins

71. “My life is not my own business.”

— Anthony Hopkins

72. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

73. “You’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?”

— Anthony Hopkins

74. “I’m the slowest driver in the world.”

— Anthony Hopkins

75. “I visualized a lot of things happening to me, because I was a lonely kid because I didn’t understand anything about school.”

— Anthony Hopkins

76. “I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.”

— Anthony Hopkins

77. “If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn’t be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven’t the patience for them. It’s maybe shallow, but that’s why I’ll never be part of the acting set.”

— Anthony Hopkins

78. “My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.”

— Anthony Hopkins

79. “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had my problems in the past, I’ve had my troubles, but you move on. I had a great life and I am really thankful for it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

80. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

81. “I would like to go back to Wales. I’m obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there.”

— Anthony Hopkins

82. “I’ll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, “Cut! Sorry, we’ve got a noise somewhere on set.” Everyone would be looking around for this cat.”

— Anthony Hopkins

83. “Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.”

— Anthony Hopkins

84. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

85. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

86. “We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.”

— Anthony Hopkins

87. “Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I’d follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I’ve been very lucky.”

— Anthony Hopkins

88. “Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.”

— Anthony Hopkins

89. “I love roller coasters. I don’t get a chance often, but I’ve gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.”

— Anthony Hopkins

90. “I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

91. “And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

92. “I’ve always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn’t believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical.”

— Anthony Hopkins

93. “I love traveling. I like to keep moving. I love the big open spaces in America.”

— Anthony Hopkins

94. “I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.”

— Anthony Hopkins

95. “I became an actor because I didn’t know what else to do. Academically, I wasn’t good.”

— Anthony Hopkins

96. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

97. “Shakespeare’s so bloody difficult, and I don’t like failure. You can fail on film, but there’s nobody actually there in the flesh to watch you failing.”

— Anthony Hopkins

98. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

99. “My life has been a kind of mystery to me. By all my logical, linear thinking I started out in school as a little boy, I didn’t have a clue about anything. What they were talking about in school, couldn’t play sports, couldn’t learn, and I was bottom of the class.”

— Anthony Hopkins

100. “I can’t stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don’t like the way I’m doing it they can get someone else.”

— Anthony Hopkins