So Far, So...

The Baker's Boyo

So Hi Hello & Welcome to this week’s look at the movies and movie people that matter to me.

He’s one of the most famous Actors in the world. He’s won every award worth winning. He’s feted by the public, the critics, the studios, his peers and colleagues. He’s known and yet unknowable. He’s affable and a delight but also dark as fuck and dangerous. He’s pretty much seen and done it all, been to hell and back, and has somehow not just survived but endured and thrived.

This week then I’m taking a quick look at none other than the baker’s boy from Port Talbot - ANTHONY HOPKINS.

As for the two films I’ve chosen to focus on and trumpet, well, obviously that’s been a very tough choice but I’ve plumped as ever for two contrasting films in his portfolio and two films that I think often get overlooked set against the big roles and the big films - namely MAGIC (1978) and THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993).

Philip Anthony Hopkins was born on New Years Eve 1937 in the steelworks-dominated Welsh town of Port Talbot. Everything about his birthplace and birthright was Working Class. Hopkins once said “My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.” - and that was it, that was the essence of the type of world he was born into. Nothing exciting, nothing fancy - in fact quite the opposite. Indeed the rest of the world was so fancy by comparison you weren’t meant to make it out of Port Talbot really, or if you did, not very far like.

He didn’t like School, wasn't very good at it frankly. "I was a poor learner, which left me open to ridicule and gave me an inferiority complex. I grew up absolutely convinced I was stupid." The young Hopkins preferred painting, drawing, or playing the piano rather than classes and homework. Where did these interests & passions come from? Lord knows. The anomalous joys of nature.

But he had someone like him, who grew up near him and Port Talbot and who’d done pretty darn well who would definitely serve as inspiration - a Welsh bloke called Richard Burton. Hopkins met Burton when he was 15 and Burton was back in town visiting family and driving around in a Jaguar the likes of which no-one there had even seen before in post-war tough as old boots Port Talbot. Hopkins knew he had to get out like Burton, get away from teachers, classmates and parents who kept telling him over and over again that he was too stupid for any job.

So he enrolled himself at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in the capital, Cardiff, and graduated in ‘57. Next up came two years of National Service from ‘58 to ‘60 serving with the British Army, then RADA (the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art) and then his first big break - being spotted by Laurence Olivier and joining Olivier’s newly formed National Theatre. This was quickly followed by his second big break, understudying Olivier and going on for him in Strindberg’s “The Dance Of Death’ and absolutely killing it - ““I suffered from chronic nausea for days and went through three sweat shirts in the first act, whereas Olivier would come off without a bead of sweat. It gave me a taste of my inadequacy and an even greater admiration for Olivier. It also gave me a taste of blood; I minded terribly when I stopped playing it. I had always wanted to play that kind of part so I wanted to show off and do it again and again.”

His first break in Film came with “The Lion In Winter” (1968) working alongside Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. He did good and won himself a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. Too stupid for any job my arse. The film work started to roll in very nicely thereafter with movies including “When Eight Bells Toll” (1971), “Young Winston” (1972), and “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) - the latter two with five times collaborator Richard Attenborough.

Which brings us to the first of two films for this week - MAGIC (1973)

Penned by the brilliant William Goldman and Hopkins’ second collaboration with Attenborough (after “Young Winston”) MAGIC is a psychological thriller with our boy playing a failed Magician who’s advised to develop a gimmick in order to get ahead. A year on from this advice Hopkins’ character makes his comeback as a combination of magician and ventriloquist with the help of a foul-mouthed dummy named Fats, and success beckons at last.

But instead of taking the big TV deal on offer Hopkins’ “Corky” runs off to the Catskills in order to avoid the TV network's required medical examination in case doctors find out that in fact he suffers from severe mental issues. Now things really start to take a turn for the fucked up.

I’ll say no more than that for now other than give you the trailer below, mention that Attenborough nicely steers good supporting performances from Burgess Meredith and Ann-Margret and share with you that under anyone less supremely talented than Hopkins the key role of “Corky” the film itself might very well have floundered on the rocks of ridiculousness. But Hopkins has all the depth, all the darkness, all the paranoia and crazy-town any Actor could ever want and he mines all of this with everything he’s got and delivers up a typically uber-intense performance that grabs you and never lets go. It’s a brilliant performance from Hopkins and one that gets almost entirely forgotten and overlooked and this is daft and unfair. I’m not saying the film should be in the AFI Top 100, but I do think Hopkins’ performance in it is immense and worthy of anyone’s time.

Over the next two decades Hopkins put together a string of wonderful performances in some really excellent movies - such as “The Elephant Man” (1980), “The Bounty” (1984) and “84 Charing Cross Road” (1987) before hitting global and iconic pay-dirt with “The Silence Of The Lambs” (1991) - which I’m sure will provide the “Silence Of The Lambs actor dies aged…” headline the mainstream media will use when the sad day arrives.

But in 1993 Hopkins delivered a performance so good it’s arguably one of his best if not his best. I speak of THE REMAINS OF THE DAY.

Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliant Booker Prize winning novel it’s a story told through flashbacks of a huge country pile in the mid-1930’s and the people in it. The film focuses heavily however on the stately pile’s Butler ‘Stevens’ (Hopkins) and Housekeeper ‘Miss Kenton’ (Emma Thompson). As these are brief columns due to restrictions of time and in order to not spoil things too much for those who haven't seen it yet, all I’ll say is drama abounds both ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ as Europe trundles toward a catastrophic Second World War, the Lord of the manor plays amateur politics and finds himself disastrously out of his depth and Hopkins & Thompson’s characters begin a dance so profound and profoundly emotionally repressed (certainly on Hopkins’ part) that despite what they felt for each other all those years ago all they’re left with as we look back through their eyes in 1958 when they meet up again for old time’s sake, is a rainy scene at a Bus Stop that breaks not only their hearts at what might have been, but ours too.

Thompson is superb as Kenton, Christopher Reeve has a nice little cameo and James Fox is excellent as the somewhat pathetic figure of Lord Darlington. Richard Robbins’ score is magnificent, and James Ivory is as neat and tidy as ever. But Hopkins is immense, truly immense. What he does in this Film is easy to miss. It’s so subtle, so underplayed, so deft, so genius - that whilst you’ll absolutely get more than the gist of what Hopkins is doing and sharing with us, there are such layers here, and a Hopkins in such genius, zenith-level form that the repressed emotional riches he presents us with can escape you if you don’t give Hopkins (and the film) the levels of focus and concentration they demand and also absolutely deserve.

If you haven’t yet, do please try it.

A 31yr old Hopkins said in 1969 ‘Acting is a third rate art. We are all over paid and over publicised. I hate actors but I love acting’.

As an Actor I disagree with him wildly over the ‘third rate art’ bit and the notion that most Actors are ‘over paid’ (although plenty at the top in Film and TV are for sure), but one of the many many reasons why I love ANTHONY HOPKINS is because whatever he does, whatever he thinks, whatever he believes and whatever he says - he authentic, he’s in all the way, and I love that along with so much else about the guy.

Finally… Hopkins helped fund me through drama school, and a mutual teacher (a legend called Rudi Shelly) introduced me to him when Hopkins visited the Bristol Old Vic Theatre whilst I was in Bristol studying (in part due to his kindness) at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. I escorted a by then very aged Rudi up to Hopkins’ table where he was holding court and once he saw his old mentor shuffling towards him he made sure everyone cleared out the way so he could have a chat with his old teacher and friend. The three of us nattered for about 20 minutes (me constantly pinching myself to take in the fact this was actually fucking real), I thanked Mr. Hopkins more than once for his kindness and needed help, and he was of course just a heck of a nice guy, and his love for Rudi shone through in a way that moved me enormously. (Hopkins - along with another Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and Rudi old boy Daniel Day-Lewis - would later make sure when toward the end of his life Rudi was ill and in need of care, that all his private medical bills and care home costs were totally covered)

Hopkins has repeatedly said that his father's working-class values have always underscored his life: "Whenever I get a feeling that I may be special or different, I think of my father and I remember his hands – his hardened, broken hands.”

The Baker’s Boyo from Port Talbot - what an Actor, what an Artist, what a Working Class hero.

Look after yourselves and each other, and see you next week.

Michael