Tuesday, May 14, 1996
Anthony Hopkins is one of film’s most accomplished actors, an
Oscar favorite, and a knight. Today at UCLA he accepts the Spencer
Tracy Award, adding another honor to his lengthy list.Despite an
already impressive career as a stage actor, Anthony Hopkins still
had a lot to learn about performance when he made his film debut in
"The Lion in Winter."
He started acting theatrically and spent some of his first scene
fumbling to find his performance before costar Katherine Hepburn
gave him a quick lesson about acting in film.
"She was very, very generous," says Hopkins. "She’d be very
direct  she said, ‘Let me give you a tip. Don’t act.’"
"I said, ‘What do you mean?’"
"She said, ‘Don’t act. You don’t have to act. You look good.
Good hair, good shoulders, strong voice.’ She said, ‘You don’t need
to do more than that.’
"’Just speak the lines.’"
She told Hopkins that his model should not be her (‘Don’t watch
me, I overact.’) and she pointed him in the direction of her good
friend and frequent costar Spencer Tracy. "He doesn’t act," she
said, "He just says the lines."
Hopkins grew up in Wales watching American movies starring Tracy
and other Hollywood legends. As one of today’s most admired actors,
Hopkins has definitely benefitted from Tracy’s legacy.
Today at noon in Ackerman Grand Ballroom, Tracy will once again
leave a mark on Hopkins’ life when the star of films ranging from
"Bram Stoker’s Dracula" to "Howard’s End" will accept the Spencer
Tracy Award for Dramatic Achievement.
"Laurence Olivier told me, ‘Steal as much as you can from
people,’" says Hopkins. "’If you admire somebody, take their
tricks, borrow from them.’"
He admires Tracy’s naturalism and apparent effortlessness.
"Tracy  you can’t really imitate him, but you can watch.
His weird thing is that he doesn’t seem to act at all."
For the last decade, Hopkins has been the actor few can imitate.
An Oscar for his 25 minutes on-screen as a flesh-eating
headshrinker in "Silence of the Lambs" catapulted him to A-list
status. Recent performances in "Remains of the Day" and "Nixon"
have also earned him Oscar nominations, and this year he made his
directorial debut with "August." There’s another project that
hasn’t hit the screen yet  his "Surviving Picasso" is still
waiting to be seen, but after that, the recent flurry of Hopkins
movies will cease.
A lifelong fan of the excesses of America, Hopkins recently
moved to Pacific Palisades. He’s taken a long break to rest, and he
plans to continue his vacation until August. "I’m having the best
time of my life now," he says, and at 58, he looks fit and healthy.
California  and Hollywood  clearly agree with him.
After the award is presented today, Hopkins will answer
questions from students. Some will surely inquire about his style
of preparation, almost as legendary as some of his performances.
Hopkins reads the script over and over, as many as 150 times, as he
believes the screenplay and the lines are critical.
"The text is everything you need to know," he says. "I read the
script twice and I take the scenes down, and if they’re written in
dialogue, I write it as a speech."
He also uses colored pencils to mark the text. "(Others on set)
ask me, ‘What are those colors?’" he laughs, "and I say that’s a
secret. It’s just to make the page look prettier."
It all comes down to complete mastery over the material.
"You know it so well," Hopkins says, "you can do whatever you
want."
Obviously this can be arduous, especially in a film like
"Nixon," where the lengthy script, frequent rewrites and massive
number of lines for his character made his task formidable.
"’Nixon’ was such a monumental part, just a massive number of
lines," Hopkins says. "That was exhausting, and hard work, but it
didn’t cause me a nervous breakdown."
The exhaustion is infinitely preferable to the result of
inadequate preparation. "The worst enemy is tension," he says, "and
nervousness."
"Any actor who says, ‘I don’t need to learn my lines, I can
improvise’ is a fool. It’s anarchy, you see them sweating."
Hopkins believes that thorough preparation facilitates his
creative process ("something happens in the subconscious mind"),
and he says the other benefit of his technique is productivity.
"You can do four pages all in one take," he says. "That’s how
you get in directors’ good books. You save time, because it’s all
about money as well."
With this nuts-and-bolts approach to performance, Hopkins
removes the psychoanalysis and personal turmoil from the work.
"Somebody said, ‘How do you play a butler and Hannibal Lecter?’"
he says. "I said, ‘Well, one man’s nuts and the other doesn’t move
very much, he talks very quietly and says, ‘Would you like some
tea, my lord?’ or whatever.’"
For Hopkins, roles, movies and scenes are simply broken down
into their components. From this approach, coupled with Hepburn’s
advice, transcendent moments of performance result.
One such scene occurs in "Remains of the Day" where Hopkins’
character, the butler Mr. Stevens, a figure of utmost restraint and
control, is disturbed in his study by love interest Emma
Thompson.
"(‘Remains of the Day’ director) James Ivory has a technique of
not directing, he lets you find out where you want to go."
Small decisions like walking around a desk and how to pace the
scene proved crucial to the result’s emotional pull. Hopkins
figured his character should be fairly relaxed in the scene because
"all the sexual tension will come out anyway."
Many characters in Hopkins’ career have possessed this calm
exterior with complex underpinnings, but none more diabolical than
Hannibal Lecter. To the actor, one of the psychopath’s more ominous
characteristics was that calm facade.
"I think his terrifying potential is that he doesn’t move very
much," says Hopkins. "The audience knows that he’s nuts. The FBI
man told Jodie Foster that he’s nuts, that he was a monster so the
audience is waiting for this guy. And so the camera goes down the
corridor and you see this ordinary man."
For him, Lecter’s nature is revealed in the scene where Clarice,
Jodie Foster’s FBI agent, visits him for the first time.
"He’s very polite to her and then he devastates her with an
insult," he says, "It’s just terrifying. He hasn’t changed his
condition, he’s not frothing at the mouth, he’s just tearing her to
pieces."
Hopkins feels this dynamic between internal and external draws
the audience into the performance.
"You give them a chance to figure it out for themselves and put
it together," he says. "Like ‘The Usual Suspects.’ The audience
does the work, the mental gymnastics, trying to put it
together."
Hopkins is being overly modest. But perhaps performances as rich
and varied as his have been spring from the little decisions and
hard work.
"I try and make it simple. It probably isn’t as simple as I’m
making it, but to me it’s simple."
John Mangum contributed to this article.
EVENT: Anthony Hopkins will accept the Spencer Tracy Award for
Dramatic Achievement in Ackerman Grand Ballroom today at noon.
Free. For more info, call (310) 825-1958.
By Lael Loewenstein and Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Clockwise from above:
In the soon-to-be released "Surviving Picasso," Anthony Hopkins
portrays the artist.
Anthony Hopkins plays the restrained butler Stevens in love with
Emma Thompson in "Remains of the Day."
Anthony Hopkins (right) and Oliver Stone on the set of
"Nixon."