Anthony Hopkins: The Unauthorized Biography

1994·0.71 MB·english

by  Michael Feeney Callan

ANTHONY
HOPKINS
The Unauthorized Biography

Michael Feeny Callan

Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York

Maxwell Macmillian International
New York Oxford Sydney
Copyright ©19513 by Michael Feeney Callan First United States Edition 1994
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
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information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Charles Scribner’s Sons Macmillan Publishing Company 866 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Macmillan Publishing Company is part of the Maxwell Communication Group of Companies.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Callan, Michael Feeney.
Anthony Hopkins: a biography/ Michael Feeney Callan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-684-19679-4
1. Hopkins, Anthony, 1937- 2. Actors-Great Britain- Biography I. Title.
PN2598.H66C36 1994
792’.028’092-dc20 93-40256 CIP [B]

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Printed in the United States of America
For Paris, ma belle
CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Tyranny of Myth

PART ONE
GRASPING THE FAIRY’S WING
1 The Cornish Gabbro Axe
2 The Invisible Boy
3 Road to Blood Island
4 A Day (or Two) at the Races
5 Not So Grand National
6 Breakages
7 Wayne, 201 – Hopkins, 4
8 War and War
9 The Bear in Flight

PART TWO
FLYING
10 The Way to Sexy Death
11 Corky Speaks Up
12 Running on Empty
13 Surrender and Win
14 Home … and Dry!
15 Chrysalis
16 Butterfly

Epilogue

APPENDICES
Sources and Bibliography
Plays
Films
Television Performances

Index
‘I love going back to the past to look around. I don’t
know what the hell I’m looking for.’
Anthony Hopkins, February 1993

‘Innocence sometimes invites its own calamity’
I Ching
INTRODUCTION
AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sir Anthony Hopkins offered me little comfort as I progressed with
this work. After tenuous contact, which predated his 1992 Oscar
and subsequent knighthood, he finally wrote that he had ‘had
enough of talking about yours truly’ and, without much sympathy it
seemed, I was on my own. Shortly after, as the routine of writing
hit full flight, his wife Jenni, a former film production assistant who
acts persuasively as his personal secretary, contacted my chief
researcher Karen Cook to complain of our pursuit of Muriel,
Hopkins’ mother, who lives in comfortable retirement at Caldicott,
Gwent, just a few miles from the stomping ground of the actor’s
youth. She requested that we desist from pursuing an interview
and ‘burn Mrs. Hopkins’ phone number.’ She made it clear that
Muriel Hopkins was elderly, that her memories had no substantial
bearing on the story we had to tell, and that she was not in the
best of health. We, of course, desisted. Anthony Hopkins had
earlier emphasized that he would ‘put up no obstacles’ for me, but
at the same time that he would like to shield ‘whatever close
friends I have’ from the interrogation of biographical analysis.
To be honest, his concluding position suited me. Aware as I
was of his 1989 authorized biography, Quentin Falk’s very
readable Too Good to Waste, I was wary of the inevitability of
restrictions that would come with any formal participation. The deal
struck with Falk in the late eighties prevented any investigation of
Hopkins’ first marriage, to comedian Eric Barker’s daughter
Petronella, an actress he met in Wales and grew dose to during
their contract period at the National Theatre, and who shared with
him the storm of his early alcoholism. It also restricted analysis of
the alcoholism itself, I believe, in a subtle censorship. Though
Hopkins is on record admitting to fifteen years of alcohol abuse,
Falk’s book offers a bald graph of that illness and only a one-page
reference to Alcoholics Anonymous in the index.
The issue of a subject’s participation in or authorization of a
biography has always challenged the careful reader. While it is
generally accepted that strict autobiography carries the mandate
to hedge and exonerate, ‘approved’ biographies can be fishy stuff
too. Humphrey Barton, biographer of Benjamin Britten and others,
illuminated the problem when he wrote in The Times. ‘I recall,
while writing one biography, standing late at night outside my
subject’s house — long after he had died and everyone departed
— and saying to myself, ‘If only I could tell readers what really
happened …’ It did not amount to much, I suppose; chiefly a great
deal more domestic misery than I had been able to portray, for fear
of family censorship. But I felt, and still feel, as if the real story had
been omitted from the book.’
For my money, the paragon autobiographies are those of
Bertrand Russell (where he admits to failings of love on account of
his dental pyorrhoea) and H. G. Wells’s Experiment in
Autobiography (where he cheerfully admits to a penchant for
infidelities in his seventies). These deploy a bare-faced candour as
enriching for its prejudice and pomposity as it is for its deeply
significant integrity. Few comparable ‘authorized’ works jump to
mind. Most — if not all in the realm of showbiz — seem
compromised by the vested interest. Certainly, in the narcissistic
mythology of showbiz, the very principle of revelatory honesty
seems inapt. The ego is all, so living players reinforce the goods at
every turn. Superior intellects only heighten the game. Chaplin’s
memoir is a titanic work of damage control, Gielgud’s plain
slippery. Lesser stars with lesser visions parlay ‘work’ that
diminishes the triumph of the printing press and makes fools of us
all.
Increasingly, as a result of my own previous biographies —
Sean Connery gave me the silent nod, then kept his distance;
Richard Harris authorized me, then withdrew when I deviated from
his chosen path of suitable interviewees — I have come to believe
that the only valid kick-off point in a biographical study is fair
distance. The honest biographer is then presented with the
disarrayed carpet of circumstantial evidence, and forced to make up
his own mind.
Biography at its best is detection. In the case of Tony Hopkins I
started with a gut admiration for the breadth of his playing … and a
confusion about his artistic and personal mores. Through the years
of work I have read all the transcripts and seen the TY interviews. I
have listened to him interpret his own life and work and diagnose
his troubles. I have spoken to people close to him, people who
lived with him, who have constantly alluded to a greater mystery
than I imagined when I set out. I recall my initial preconceptions,
and how they were upended as I went along. From the outset it
has been a tangled skein: the friendless childhood (I found many
friends), the apathy for life (I learnt about burning teenage
passions), the wildness (I learnt of paralysing fears), the idolatry for
Olivier and the National (abandoned), the adoration of America
(out-distanced), the alcoholism (conquered), the despair and
paranoia.
Tony Hopkins presented a prism of contradictions. The stage-
craft, the voice quality, the genius for mimicry, the mystical
presence, the popular appeal — all of it was undeniably true. And
yet every triumph, cliché as it sounds, threw a shadow. For Hopkins,
no moment seemed true enough, no peak high enough. All his
friends, co-workers, actors and directors, from his first days at the
YMCA in Port Talbot to his Hollywood heyday, speak of him as ‘an
actor of instinct.’ Yet, even out of alcoholism, his best instincts were
frequently counter-balanced by appalling professional
misjudgements. Victory at Entebbe, A Change of Seasons,
Hollywood Wives … effusions of vapid nonsense every bit as
careless as the trash for which he privately castigated lesser actors.
What was this self-checking mechanism that operated too in his
private life, unbalancing him at moments of great domestic peace,
precipitating crisis after crisis? A distortion of chance? Or more?
Time and wide research told me it was more, much more.
In finding the real Anthony Hopkins I uncovered great surprises
— and a greater, more vibrant, more complex and unresolved
personality than I had ever imagined. Hopkins’ deep and disturbed
character initially intrigued me, finally mesmerized me. Even as I
conclude this work, with analysis locked in a typewriter, he moves
with the coruscation of a jewel. In this sense, Sir Anthony Hopkins
is truly what a star should be: dazzling, beguiling, comprehensible,
yet abidingly remote.
Throughout the project I have been assisted by many generous
people who contributed through personal interviews, archive
research, transcribing and collating. Without the warmth, trust and
cooperation of the following, the last two years of my life would
have been considerably less rewarding: Brian Evans, Russell
Johns, Douglas Rees, Les Evans, Jean Lody, Elved Lody, Peter
Bray, Keith Brown, Evelyn Mainwaring, Harry Davies, Jeff Bowen,
Sally Roberts Jones, The Reverend Peter Cobb, Douglas Watkins,
Douglas Cook, Grafton Radcliffe, Dr Raymond Edwards, Connie
Say, Max Horton, Mrs Frances Williams, Mrs Dorothy Morgan, Bill
Watkins, Dr Hugh Cormack, Amanda Cornish, Helen Williams
(HTV Wales), Mansell Jones (HTV Wales), Mrs Jean Lovell, Steve
Jones (Port Talbot Borough Council), Michael Prosser (Port Talbot
and East Guardian), Mr Peter Phillips (West Monmouth School),
Frank Witty, Graham Harris, Don Touhig, Eve Williams, John Elliott
(Soldier Magazine), John Anderson (Columbia Pictures
Distribution), David Cox (BSkyB), Allen Eaton (Orion), Major Arber
(Membership Secretary, National Service), John Hughes (Taibach
Library), Pamela Piggott-Smith, Peter Gill, Stanley Forbes, Bill
‘Harvey’ Thomas, Lionel Wheble, Colonel W. F. Cubitt, David
Scase, Michael Darlow, Rosalie Scase, Jean Boht, Clive Perry,
Roy Marsden, Peter Barkworth, Simon Ward, Adrian Reynolds,
Roger Hammond, Martin Jarvis, Harold Innocent, John Moffatt,
Ronald Pickup, Alan Dobie, Gawn Grainger, David Cunliffe, James
Cellan Jones, Ed Lauter, Elliott Kastner, Ferdy Mayne, Anthony
Harvey, David White, Jim Dale, Dame Judi Dench, James A.
Doolittle, Innes Lloyd, Marion Rosenberg, Michael Winner, Philip
Hinchcliffe, Judith Searle, Simon Matthews, John Dexter, Signe in
Jonathan Demme’s office, Janet Glass, Robert Wise, Kevan
Barker, Lawrence Grobel, Nick Carter (South Wales Evening
Post), Ivan Waterman, Philip L. Sebury (South Wales Evening
Post), Mark Bloom (Western Mail), Lindsay Anderson, Petronella
Barker Hopkins and Michael Cimino. I should point out here that a
number of people requested anonymity in their contributions, and
of course I have honoured their choice. In the case of Petronella
Barker Hopkins, the request was made not to publish direct