Sir Anthony Hopkins (1937-) b. Port Talbot, Wales.

British actor who achieved international recognition for strong dramatic acting in the 1970s and 1980s, and notoriety for the monstrous credibility of his Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs (1990). A respected theatre and television actor, his best film performances are those which allow him a little scope for theatricality. His Captain Bligh in the 1984 version of The Bounty rivalled Charles Laughton‘s; Richard Attenborough discovered his sinister qualities in Magic (1978); and David Lynch cast him effectively as Dr Treves in The Elephant Man (1980). His more subdued acting skills are evident in 84 Charing Cross Road (1986), which began life as a BBC television play. More recently, he has taken out a patent on the emotional reticence of the middle-aged English male with a restrained performance as a repressed Edwardian patriarch in Howard’s End (1991), as a butler struggling with feelings while the world turns in Remains of the Day (1993), and as the writer C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands (1993).

More irrepressibly, he has punctuated this streak of constricted Englishness with a wonderfully over-the-top performance as the Dutchman Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). He was knighted in 1993. His more recent films include John Schlesinger‘s The Innocent (1993.), and the epically melodramatic Legends of the Fall (1994). He played the title role in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995).