People
Anthony Hopkins
Acting · follow into films and chains
Biography
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE (born December 31, 1937) is a Welsh actor, film director, and film producer. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards and a British Academy Television Award. He has also received an honorary Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Fellowship from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 1993, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts, and in 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his achievements in the motion picture industry. After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, Hopkins trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was then spotted by Laurence Olivier who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in 1965. Productions at the National included King Lear, his favourite Shakespeare play. His last stage play was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989. In 1968, Hopkins achieved recognition in film, playing Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter. In the mid-1970s, Richard Attenborough, who directed five Hopkins films, called him "the greatest actor of his generation." In 1991, he portrayed Hannibal Lecter in the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. He reprised the role in its sequel Hannibal and the prequel Red Dragon. Other notable films include The Elephant Man (1980), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Howards End (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Shadowlands (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), Meet Joe Black (1998), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), and Thor: Ragnarok (2017). He received four more Academy Award nominations for The Remains of the Day (1993), Nixon (1995), Amistad (1997) and The Two Popes (2019) before winning a fourth BAFTA Award and a second Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of an elderly man diagnosed with dementia in The Father (2020), becoming the oldest Best Actor Oscar winner to date. Since making his television debut with the BBC in 1967, Hopkins has continued to appear on television. In 1973 he received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his performance in War and Peace. In 2015, he starred in the BBC film The Dresser alongside Ian McKellen. In 2018, he starred in King Lear opposite Emma Thompson. In 2016 and 2018, he starred in the HBO television series Westworld, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
When Studios Marry: Films Born of Corporate Chaos
From the ashes of mergers and acquisitions come some of cinema's most fascinating experiments. This chain traces how boardroom decisions shaped the art on scree...
8 films
When Finishing Beats Winning
A chain of films where the protagonist loses the official contest but achieves a deeper, personal victory, redefining what it means to go the distance.
8 films
Small Craft Warnings
From the open sea to a leaky skiff, these eight films use small boats as vessels for self-discovery, each one a different kind of voyage.
8 films
The Stage on Screen: A Theatrical Journey
From the claustrophobic confines of a cabin to the sprawling sets of a Shakespearean epic, these eight films celebrate the art of theatre translated to cinema.
7 films
From Oscar Glory to Genre Gold: A Career Reinvention Chain
Trace the arc of performers who swapped prestige for pulp, and found a different kind of immortality in genre cinema.
4 films
The Verse Will Outlive the Stage
Eight films that take Shakespeare's words into new weather, new cities and new blood, proving the plays were never meant to stay indoors.
8 films
The Mind's Eye: Crime Films of Obsession and Interiority
From a detective's haunted pursuit to a killer's fractured psyche, this chain traces cinema's most intimate crime stories, where the real action happens inside...
8 films
Moana and the Sea as Mirror and Crucible
Taking the core premise of Moana (the ocean as a living force that tests, transforms, and reveals who you are) and steering it into far darker territory, this c...
8 films
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Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Acted
One Life
2023 · Nicholas Winton
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire
2023 · Jimmy (voice)
The Father
2020 · Anthony
Thor: Ragnarok
2017 · Odin
Misconduct
2016 · Arthur Denning
Blackway
2015 · Lester
Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
2015 · Freddy Heineken
Noah
2014 · Methuselah
Thor: The Dark World
2013 · Odin
RED 2
2013 · Bailey
Thor
2011 · Odin
The Rite
2011 · Father Lucas Trevant
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
2010 · Alfie
Beowulf
2007 · Hrothgar (Voice)
Shortcut to Happiness
2007 · Daniel Webster
The World's Fastest Indian
2005 · Burt Munro
Alexander
2004 · Old Ptolemy
Red Dragon
2002 · Hannibal Lecter
Bad Company
2002 · Oakes
Hannibal
2001 · Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Titus
1999 · Titus Andronicus
Instinct
1999 · Dr. Ethan Powell
Meet Joe Black
1998 · William Parrish
The Mask of Zorro
1998 · Don Diego de la Vega / Zorro
Amistad
1997 · John Quincy Adams
The Edge
1997 · Charles Morse
Nixon
1995 · Richard Nixon
The Road to Wellville
1994 · Dr. John Harvey Kellogg
The Remains of the Day
1993 · James Stevens
Chaplin
1992 · George Hayden
Bram Stoker's Dracula
1992 · Professor Abraham Van Helsing
Howards End
1992 · Henry J. Wilcox
The Silence of the Lambs
1991 · Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Desperate Hours
1990 · Tim Cornell
Mussolini and I
1985 · Count Galeazzo Ciano
Guilty Conscience
1985 · Arthur Jamison
The Bounty
1984 · Lieutenant William Bligh
The Elephant Man
1980 · Frederick Treves
Magic
1978 · Corky Withers / Fats (voice)
A Bridge Too Far
1977 · Lt. Col. John D. Frost
The Housekeeper
— · Lord Grenville-Whithers