Role Of A Lifetime: Being Myself

It’s hard to believe it, but even though Anthony Hopkins has won loads of awards he still struggles with self-confidence and feels like he’s a fraud. In this interview he opens up about the alcoholism and crippling doubt that almost torpedoed his career

- Caroline Scott

Even though he’s spent years living in America, he still gets homesick. When this happens Sir Anthony Hopkins likes to open up Google Maps and tour the streets of Margam, the steel town in south Wales where he was born on New Year’s Eve, 83 years ago.

“I’ll start at my grandfather’s house, go up Caernarfon Road, then I’ll travel all over Port Talbot. It’s just a game,” he says.

As a child he liked to hang on to the pole at the back of the buses that took him into Port Talbot, impatient for things to happen. And he’s still impatient, both with life – “Just get on with it. We’re all going to die” – and with himself.

“I’ve had a couple of minor injuries from moving too fast, doing too much,” he says. “My wife tells me to slow down, and I do listen.”

When he arrived in America four decades ago he was a restless young man with an inferiority complex who felt as though he fitted in nowhere. Now one of the most-revered and most-celebrated actors in Hollywood, his performance in his latest film, The Father, has earned him a Bafta and at the time of going to print it was widely being predicted that it would also bag him an Oscar. If he bags it, he will make history as the oldest man to win the Academy Award for best actor.