Off-Cut Twenty Three

Although GRETA SCACCHI (see Off-Cut Twenty Two) feels that film culture is more about the actor than the writer ANTHONY HOPKINS in an interview recorded in Germany about "Hannibal" explained a different and very personal point of view. At this press conference there was an implied level of criticism by some of the journalists about the level of violence and the intellectual validity of the film. ANTHONY was discreetly but actively defending the film. This interview was played on ABC Radio National 23rd February 2001

ANTHONY HOPKINS: " I trust the producers the directors and the writers. If I didn't trust them I wouldn't work with them. I am only an actor and I go by my instincts and my intuition most of the time and I trust Ridley Scott to make the right decision. You see a film is made. I don't make a movie, I just appear in it. I don't do anything very much except learn my lines, show up, put on my clothes and make sure the cheque is on the way to my agent."

"…But I don't get involved in the politics…This is my opinion, and I don't care I'm going to say it anyway. I think actors who want that kind of power are crazy… they're nuts. You are at a roulette table why give up your power and move to another table to become a producer or a director or a writer… it's rubbish. If actors want to do that I admire them, if they think they can do that…I can't, I don't have the equipment to do that…I am too lazy mentally to get involved in all that stuff… but if I didn't like the script I wouldn't have done it."

When analyzing the attraction of Hannibal Lecter ANTHONY said " The most fascinating parts are people like Iago in Shakespeare and Richard III… fascinating parts like Phantom of the Opera, Quasimodo, Cyrano De Bergerac…not that they are evil but they are imprisoned in their own deformity… in their own tragic fault …which is Hannibal Lecter. It is an interesting psychological question to me and a riddle… why are people drawn to people like Lecter or Iago? And my only theory as an amateur psychiatrist…or layman… is that we are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the bogey man. It's part of our mechanism, it's the duality in our psyche… the dark and the light, the light and the dark… and the shadowy figures are the most fascinating, because they are inaccessible, mysterious and they are terrifying. And Lecter is a classical case of it. He is the pure paradox of human nature."

February 2001