With his portrayal of the terrifying Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins finally penetrated Americans' consciousness, not to mention their nightmares. For those hungry for more of the 53-year-old Welsh actor, here's a Hopkins half dozen that can be sampled on video.
Magic (1978)
In this ponderous psychological thriller
directed by Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), Hopkins plays a terminally
timid magician-ventriloquist dominated by his own dummy. From the
start, Hopkins forgoes the subtle route and heads straight over the
top, squeezing what fun there is out of William Goldman's humorless
script. C+
The Elephant Man (1980)
Lambs director Jonathan
Demme has said it was Hopkins' affecting performance as the grand,
compassionate Dr. Frederick Treves that convinced him to cast the
actor as Dr. Lecter, Treves' evil twin. In this bleak film directed
by David Lynch, the well-intentioned Treves saves the disfigured John
Merrick (John Hurt) from the life of sideshow freak, only to
confront the prospect that he has intensified his patient's pain
rather than healed it. A
The Bounty (1984)
This remake of the Mutiny on the Bountystory gives Lieut. William Bligh a personality change: No longer a
hissably demonic madman, Hopkins' updated Bligh is a complicated guy.
Puritanical, uncompromising, yet pitiable, he was the wrong man for
the job, resorting to mindless discipline in confronting Mel Gibson's
hedonistic mutineer. B-
84 Charging Cross Road (1987)
In this based-in-truth
story, Hopkins is a London bookseller who has an epistolary
transatlantic relationship with Manhattan bibliophile Anne
Bancroft. Hopkins gradually and subtly reveals a genuine warmth and a
touch of the romantic in this straitlaced, married middle-aged man.
He speaks pages with only a lost-in-thought gaze. A-
The Good Father (1987)
Hopkins spits nails as an
embittered, insecure divorcé, Bill Hooper, who resents his ex-wife's
custody of their son but isn't willing to accept responsibility for
him. In this unflinching drama about the damage men and women do to
one another, Hopkins, almost never offscreen, turns in one of the
best, most neglected film performances of the decade. B+
A Chorus of Disapproval (1988)
A daffy, slight British
comedy about a widower (Jeremy Irons) who moves to a seaside town,
joins an amateur theatrical company, and to his surprise begins
attracting throngs of women. In a rare comedic role, Hopkins is the
film's primary source of humor as the cantankerous director. With
shoulders hunched, a limp that comes and goes, and a left-eye squint,
Hopkins proves surprisingly deft at physical comedy. C+
