Top 180 Anthony Hopkins Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “I watched a film with a very famous, great, great actor, I won’t mention his name because everyone loves his memory, but I thought, “God he was acting a lot.” Great actor, but nonstop acting. Wall to wall, fitted-carpet acting.”

— Anthony Hopkins

102. “I could stay making nice safe BBC movies for the rest of my life, so I decided to risk it. It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.”

— Anthony Hopkins

103. “Some nights you might go through an entire performance and not feel a thing, and the audience may have a much better time, ’cause if you’re enjoying yourself on stage too much, they’re having a terrible time because they can’t hear you. And if you’re a woman your mascara’s running.”

— Anthony Hopkins

104. “Oliver Stone is a great director and I’ve seen many films over the years, but I try to create stuff out of my own imagination. I want to break all the rules and mess about with it and make a different movie just for the fun of it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

105. “In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can’t stand it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

106. “There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It’s a bit scarier going on stage.”

— Anthony Hopkins

107. “It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.”

— Anthony Hopkins

108. “I’ve got a great sense of humor.”

— Anthony Hopkins

109. “I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don’t, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that’s fine, but I can’t work like that.”

— Anthony Hopkins

110. “I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It’s part of my nature. I wouldn’t be an actor if I wasn’t.”

— Anthony Hopkins

111. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

112. “That’s what happens if you don’t address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal.”

— Anthony Hopkins

113. “The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don’t dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.”

— Anthony Hopkins

114. “When I was a younger actor, I was very immersed in it, very “method” and all that. Now, I don’t give a hoot.”

— Anthony Hopkins

115. “I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.”

— Anthony Hopkins

116. “Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.”

— Anthony Hopkins

117. “What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that big movies are going to come out and then you see them up in Malibu in the little triplex theatre a week later and you think, this is show business. This is the great movie career. And it’s all funded in the shoe box.”

— Anthony Hopkins

118. “You have to be pretty tough to be an actor, and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can’t waffle through this business.”

— Anthony Hopkins

119. “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”

— Anthony Hopkins

120. “Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can’t do it anymore. And that’s what I want to do.”

— Anthony Hopkins

121. “I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.”

— Anthony Hopkins

122. “I said once that if they gave me enough money to read the phone book, I’d do it. I live in a total state of non-expectation. I don’t expect things, and I keep my expectations very low about everything.”

— Anthony Hopkins

123. “It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged... and found wanting.”

— Anthony Hopkins

124. “We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.”

— Anthony Hopkins

125. “I’m glad I’m not young anymore. I don’t want to start all over again.”

— Anthony Hopkins

126. “The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.”

— Anthony Hopkins

127. “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.”

— Anthony Hopkins

128. “I wanted revenge; I wanted to dance on the graves of a few people who made me unhappy. It’s a pretty infantile way to go through life – I’ll show them – but I’ve done it, and I’ve got more than I ever dreamed of.”

— Anthony Hopkins

129. “I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.”

— Anthony Hopkins

130. “I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.”

— Anthony Hopkins

131. “The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That’s the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.”

— Anthony Hopkins

132. “I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. “Action” – and then do it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

133. “Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you’re certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have – that certainty is something to be guarded about.”

— Anthony Hopkins

134. “Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.”

— Anthony Hopkins

135. “I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.”

— Anthony Hopkins

136. “I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.”

— Anthony Hopkins

137. “When you’re younger you’ve got a lot of ideas and you’re probably more insecure. I work with young actors now and I see their insecurities, and I make them laugh because I know exactly what they’re going through. When you get older you think, it’s only a movie after all, it’s not brain surgery.”

— Anthony Hopkins

138. “I don’t push my luck. I don’t worry about the results and therefore everything seems to work out well. That’s something I’ve learnt over the years. The whole thing about the acting business is that it’s a hit-or-miss game so I keep my distance from it.”

— Anthony Hopkins

139. “The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can’t even comprehend it. It’s such an illusion, it’s such a strange thing.”

— Anthony Hopkins

140. “I’m married. My wife, Stella – a beautiful woman. She’s brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.”

— Anthony Hopkins

141. “Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people – and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn’t mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter – but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness.”

— Anthony Hopkins

142. “I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.”

— Anthony Hopkins

143. “When people call me Sir Anthony I just think oh, that’s a bit odd. But I’m not cynical about it. Um, I just feel more comfortable being called Tony or Mr. Hopkins, whatever name I’m called.”

— Anthony Hopkins

144. “My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.”

— Anthony Hopkins

145. “I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.”

— Anthony Hopkins

146. “I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had.”

— Anthony Hopkins

147. “I’m more and more convinced that life is a dream. What has happened to me is surely a dream.”

— Anthony Hopkins

148. “I’m just an actor. It’s the way the script is written, and it’s easy. I don’t have think about it. When you receive the script, you know pretty well how to play it, apart from little technicalities like the accent.”

— Anthony Hopkins

149. “My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots – cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it’s just acting.”

— Anthony Hopkins

150. “People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There’s a thing in psychology where they think if it’s popular, it can’t be serious.”

— Anthony Hopkins