Anthony Hopkins claims he "doesn't care" if he has grandchildren, revealing 20-year rift with daughter Abigail
Sir Anthony Hopkins has quite the strange way of showing how to be grandpa of the year - and in that, he does not care if his estranged daughter has had children or not. The shocking admission was made in an interview where he claimed he is not interested in whether his estranged daughter has had children or not.
The screen legend made his shock admission in an interview with Radio Times, when he was asked about Abigail, 48, his daughter from his first marriage. Him and Abigail have supposedly had no contact in the last few years.
The 80-year-old was asked if he was a grandfather now, to which he claimed: "I don’t have any idea. People break up. Families split and, you know, ‘get on with your life’. People make choices. I don’t care one way or the other.”
The interviewer called him cold, to which he replied: “Well, it is cold. Because life is cold. It’s like John Osborne’s response when someone said to him, ‘Mr Osborne, your play is offensive,’ and he said, ‘Life is offensive.’”
Abigail, who uses the surname Harrison, was born to the Welsh-born actor and his first wife, Petronella Barker in 1969. The actor had walked out on her and their 14-month-old daughter to live with production assistant, Jenni Lynton. Since then, Abigail, who was brought up in London, has had little contact with her father, and in later years, she was treated for drug addiction too.
“I came very close to killing myself," she had once said in an interview, reported Mirror. "The root cause was that my father and I had an intermittent relationship.” Yet, when she began working as an actress, going by the name of Abigail Harrison, Hopkins had given her roles in two of his films - Shadowlands and The Remains of The Day. Abigail acted in the 2015 film Romeo vs Juliet. In 2O03 she released her debut album, Smile Road. Since then she has released Blue Satin Alley (2005), The Lighthouse Keeper (EP, 2007) and The Memoirs of An Outlaw (2008).
As for the veteran actor, who is set to star as King Lear in BBC's upcoming adaptation, he reveals his own personal lack of friendships in the interview with Radio Times.
“I like people but I’m on my own," he mentioned. "I paint, I write music and I play the piano. I have no ambitions. I’m happily married but my wife worries because I work too hard. I will go on working because what else would I do? I mean, I can’t play golf and I don’t wish to.”
Speaking of his Shakespearean role of King Lear, Hopkins believes he's not going to lose his mind like the character did. “I don’t think I will go mad now, he said. "The best I can say is that I’ve tunneled through the mountain of my life and come out the other side. I think once you’re in your 80s then you feel OK because you know your time is limited and you’d better get on with it and enjoy it.”
As for his opinions on Tinseltown, he considers it “insidious” and full of “entitled” people. He added: “It’s a poisonous, toxic atmosphere and I don’t want to be surrounded by people like that.”