Anthony Hopkins

“I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.”

“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 w...”

“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 tha...”

“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....”

“If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothin...”

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

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

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

“Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales,...”

“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.”

“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 craz...”

“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 come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my cr...”

“I have a punishing workout regimen. Every day I do 3 minutes on a treadmill, then I lie down, drink a glass of vodka and smoke a cigarette.”

“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.”

“A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.”

“My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants.”

“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.”

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

“I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that...”