Quotes By Anthony Hopkins

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

I like to take it easy.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

I'm always cast in these strange men... that's not me, really.

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.

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

I love roller coasters. I don't get a chance often, but I've gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.

Oh yes. I'm an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

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.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can't even comprehend it. It's such an illusion, it's such a strange thing.

I love life because what more is there?

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

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

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist.

I'm the slowest driver in the world.

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.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.

This industry has been really good to me. It's been a great life. I'm not through yet. I'm ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

I never make conscious decisions.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don't, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that's fine, but I can't work like that.

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

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.