The Big Interview/ Anthony Hopkins

 

‘I knew I needed help. I knew it was over’

Alcoholism, anger, Academy Awards – and 50 years of sobriety

The Big Interview

Anthony Hopkins

As the actor approaches his 90th year and publishes an autobiography, he reflects on his early years on stage, being inspired by Laurence Olivier, becoming a Hollywood star and conquering his demons

Steve Rose
Monday 3 Novenber 2025

‘What’s the weather like over there?” asks Anthony Hopkins as soon as our video call begins. He may have lived in California for decades but some Welshness remains, in his distinctive, mellifluous voice – perhaps a little hoarser than it once was – and his preoccupation with the climate. It’s a dark evening in London but a bright, sunny morning in Los Angeles, and Hopkins is equally bright in demeanour and attire, sporting a turquoise and green shirt. “I came here 50 years ago. Somebody said: ‘Are you selling out?’ I said: ‘No, I just like the climate and to get a suntan.’ But I like Los Angeles. I’ve had a great life here.”

 

Kevin Costner in Cannes en 2024.STEPHANE CARDINALE - 

‘The high point of my life was not a movie’: Kevin Costner, a classic heartthrob in search of his last chance

The big star of the 1980s and 1990s hit rock bottom with ‘Waterworld’ and has been trying to climb back up for the past 30 years. His latest effort is called ‘Horizon: An American Saga’

EVA GÜIMIL
11 June 2024

In The Big Chill (1983), he was meant to rub shoulders with Glenn Close and Kevin Kline, but ended up being a corpse that only appears on screen for a few seconds. Just six years later,Kevin Costner was Hollywood’s biggest star and his name made any movie a success. The Bodyguard, A Perfect World, JFK and Dances with Wolves were back-to-back hits. But this period ended with Waterworld (1995), when the public decided they did not want to see him drinking his own urine or breathing with gills. That monumental failure pushed him off the throne, and he has never regained the spot.

 

Sophia Loren and Cary Grant

Sophia Loren: how Cary Grant begged me to become his lover

This article is more than 6 years old

Actress’s letters reveal the Hollywood star’s passionate pursuit of her while filming in Spain

Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sun 19 Oct 2014 00.05 BST

When the young Sophia Loren dances a sultry flamenco in the role of Juana in the 1957 film The Pride and the Passion, the onlooking crowd of peasants appear spellbound, not least among them Cary Grant, who plays the English hero. Now the public are to learn what the film star was really thinking as he watched Loren stamp her feet and swirl her skirt.

Cary Grant and Sophia Loren

The Italian screen goddess, who turned 80 last month, was drawn into a torrid love affair with Grant during the making of the film in Spain and her memoirs, to be published in a few weeks, will reveal the intimate details of the matinee idol’s determined pursuit of her on set, despite the fact he was 30 years older than her and married to his third wife.

Sophia Loren, 1961

In her first volume of autobiography, prompted by the discovery of a cache of letters and souvenirs in her Swiss home, Loren recalls that Grant urged they pray together for guidance about whether to leave their partners.

This much I Know / Jonathan Pryce / ‘Love is the most important thing’

‘In lockdown, we all looked out for each other’: Jonathan Pryce. Photograph: Karen Robinson/

Interview
This much I know

Life and style

Jonathan Pryce: ‘Love is the most important thing’

Michael Hogan
Saturday 8 August 2020

The actor, 73, on surviving coronavirus, being Pope for a few weeks, and a smouldering Warren Beatty

Michael Hogan

My father had a nervous breakdown. My parents opened a small grocery shop and he always let customers put things on tick. He was a town councillor, on the housing committee, very caring. People ended up owing him a lot of money. When I was 11, he walked out of the house and went missing for days. When he was found, he’d lost his memory. It’s why I’ve never got into debt.

The Welsh countryside was one big adventure playground. When we weren’t at school, we ran wild. There was a local paedophile but everyone knew to avoid him.

My art teacher, Ifor Jones, was an early role model. He had wonderful italic handwriting – as did I soon after, because I copied it. Aged 17, I got in trouble for driving without insurance and the clerk of the court congratulated me on my handwriting. Ifor’s son came to see me in The Merchant of Venice at the Globe in 2015 and gave me a letter from his father. I welled up when I saw the handwriting on the envelope.

Theatre can still change the world. A live experience goes deeper and stays with people longer. Film is more fleeting. It can have social impact, but there’s only one Ken Loach, sadly.

Warren Beatty looked every inch a film star. I met him a few times and I went to supper in New York in 1976. I watched women take the scenic route to the toilet so they walked past him. Every time, he’d take off his glasses and smoulder.

Work is my therapy. My father was violently attacked and died when I was 28. Five years later, I played Hamlet at the Royal Court. It helped me work out a lot of things about our relationship.

Bill Nighy always fetches a high price. I used to organise charity cabarets and auctioning off Bill invariably raised the most money. He’s stopped agreeing to it now. I think he got tired of being propositioned by ladies of a certain age.

Love is the most important thing. Giving and receiving love. I’ve been with my wife Kate [Fahy] for 48 years and it’s flown by. Where did the time go?

I got starstruck meeting Morecambe and Wise. I was a huge fan, then Eric Morecambe came up to me at this event and said: “Hello, Jon. How are you?” He chatted away like we were old pals. I was dumbfounded. It turned out a mutual friend had put him up to it.

Whenever I get depressed by our appalling leadership, I gain comfort from the fact that we’re not as bad as America.

The High Sparrow in Game Of Thrones got compared to Jeremy Corbyn, but I actually based him on Pope Francis. Three years later, I ended up playing him, too. I’m a lifelong Labour supporter and a lot of his instincts were right, but he shouldn’t have been leader. I protested side by side with Corbyn twice during the 70s. He hasn’t moved on since.

I didn’t want to do The Two Popes. I thought playing Pope Francis was a hiding to nothing. A living Pope? I wasn’t going to please anybody. But it ended up being a joyous experience. One of my best jobs ever. We screened it in Rome for members of the Vatican and they seemed to think I’d got him right.

One comfort of being in lockdown was that everyone else was, too. Well, apart from Dominic Cummings. I live in an area of east London with a lovely community feel. We all looked out for each other, dropping off home-made bread and cakes. I’ve secretly enjoyed being cocooned at home.

I had coronavirus in late March. I was hospitalised for eight days with Covid pneumonia. It left me tired and anxious for a long time, but I’m over that. I’ve now got high levels of antibodies so I’m secretly rather pleased with myself.

I always thought I’d find religion in my old age and it would be the answer to everything. It ain’t happened, apart from being Pope for a few weeks.

Jonathan Pryce is supporting Crisis’s Home for All campaign

THE GUARDIAN

James Bond / Golfinger / Review by Peter Bradshaw

James Bond

Goldfinger

4 / 5 stars4 out of 5 stars.

Peter Bradshaw
Friday 27 Jul7y 2007

"Y

ou ekshpect me to talk?" - "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to DIE!" Then why doesn't Goldfinger just shoot 007, an army of pedants have asked, instead of setting up this elaborate laser-beam creeping up to Sean Connery's penis? Perhaps he's just a procrastinator like the rest of us. Here is a revival of what could be the best Connery Bond, from 1964, facing up to sinister bullion-dealer Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) with his plan to detonate a nuclear bomb inside Fort Knox. It has Shirley Bassey's operatic theme, the Aston Martin and Shirley Eaton, killed with that magnificently macabre gold paint.

It also has, I fear, the most sexist scene in cinema history. "Man talk," says Bond to his masseuse as Felix Leiter arrives for a conference, dismissing her with a smack to the bottom. (My theory is that a feminist art director made Connery wear that bizarre poolside terry-towelling hot-pants suit in revenge.) Sir Sean was the screen Bond who tried most to replicate the worldly connoisseurship of Fleming's original; he embarrasses M with a superior knowledge of brandy, and as for drinking improperly refrigerated Dom Pérignon: "That's like listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!" Earmuffs? Well, 007, you grumpy old square: in those days, action movies were addressed to an older generation. And Connery's Bond was the last action hero to wear a three-piece suit.

THE GUARDIAN