Anthony Hopkins: Hannibal Lecter He’s Not!

When you wake up in the morning you never know what the day will hold. I never expected I would answer my cell phone while I was driving down the freeway in 2007 and hear my editor say,  “Would you like to interview Anthony Hopkins?”

“Of course I would,” I shrieked into the phone. The Welsh actor was a legend, an icon.

I was told to be at a certain art gallery the next day at 10:30 a.m. where his paintings were being exhibited, and he was making a personal appearance..

Tomorrow! Excitement and fear flooded my body as I remembered how much the 1991 film, Silence of the Lambs terrified me. The coming attractions and trailers of the psycho-genius, cannibalistic, serial killer who enjoyed eating his victims’ liver with some “fava beans and a nice Chianti,” had me so scared that on the way to the theater, I started crying and hyperventilating. I told my confused husband I wanted to go home.

Eventually I did see Silence of the Lambs, which earned Anthony Hopkins an Academy Award,  but not until it came out on DVD so I could watch it, hands over my eyes, on the small screen in the safety of my living room.

In 2001, Lecter returned in the film Hannibal and then again in 2002 in the Red Dragon. I couldn’t bring myself to see either of those films in the theater or at home, not because I didn’t think they were good films, but because I thought they were too believable. Call me a sissy, but it is the supreme testament to Anthony Hopkins’ great acting when the line between actor and character blurs and the audience can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.”

– Sarah Bernhardt

Anthony Hopkins has done that with all his roles, which was why I was nervous about coming face-to-face with Hannibal Lecter himself.