Anthony Hopkins admits he's at peace with death, says 'your life is a terminal condition'
Actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, in a recent interview, said that he is "at peace" with the idea of his death as he is preparing to mark the completion of 60 years on the screen. The veteran actor, who made his acting debut with the BBC series 'A Matter of Degree' in 1960, starred in multiple television shows and movies before playing the iconic role of Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of the Lambs' in 1991. Hopkins, in the following decades, went on to play other popular roles, including Odin in Marvel’s 'Thor' films, and recently Pope Benedict XVI in Netflix’s 'The Two Popes'; for which he received Academy Award, Bafta, and Golden Globe nominations.
Hopkins, ahead of the release of his new film 'The Father', spoke to US radio station SiriusXM, and said he feels a "wonderful peacefulness" about the approach of death. He explained: "There’s tremendous freedom because there is nothing I can do about it." The 82-year-old actor plays the character of an elderly father with dementia who is in a constant power struggle with his daughter, played by Olivia Colman.
"Your life is terminal. It’s a terminal condition, you’re not going to get off the planet alive," the Wales-born actor told The Mirror. "I remember when my mother was dying, she’d just had enough. She was 89 and wanted to go. It’s a sad subject still, but that’s inevitable."
While the actor is famously known as one of the best all-time film villains for his role as Hannibal Lecter, which earned him an Oscar for Best Actor, Hopkins over the years has embraced more benevolent characters. The actor had previously admitted that as he is getting older, he has allowed himself to connect more with his emotions.
Hopkins, however, added that he still gets "slightly embarrassed" when he sees men cry, but he also cries "easily" himself. The actor also said that he finds himself being haunted by TS Eliot's popular 1915 poem 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.' Hopkins, while explaining the poem, told the radio station, "He says at the end, ‘I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled’. And that, when I see it… I get tearful. It’s not even the melancholy or the depression, it’s the fact that I’ve had an extraordinary life."
"Pulling all the strings and the fabrics of my life together now, the past is very present to me — my own parents, my father who worked hard all his life, my mother, my grandparents," the actor said. "So I’m putting all those threads into me and I can’t even describe it, but there’s a locality in my head that I’m back in Wales. It has a tremendously powerful effect on me because I realize that I’m up there now and I’m not scared and not afraid," he added.
The 82-year-old actor, ever since the outbreak of Covid-19 in March in the United States, has been in his home in Los Angeles.