LOS ANGELES, April 25 (Reuters) – British actor Anthony
Hopkins won his second Oscar on Sunday for his heart-wrenching
performance as a man with dementia in “The Father.”
Hopkins, 83, has a six-decade film, TV and stage career,
but is perhaps best known for playing the brilliant but twisted
murderer Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 thriller “The Silence of
the Lambs,” for which he won his first Oscar.
His best lead actor win on Sunday made him the oldest actor
to get an Academy Award, an honor previously held by the late
Christopher Plummer.
In “The Father,” Hopkins plays an aging man who has refused
any help from his family and who is beginning to doubt what is
real and what is imagined. It is adapted from a 2012 stage play
of the same name.
Hopkins told Variety that playing the role “made me very
aware now how precious life is.”
Born in Wales, the soft-spoken Hopkins is the son of a baker
whose career has seen him playing characters ranging from the
late U.S. President Richard Nixon to artist Pablo Picasso, Pope
Benedict and director Alfred Hitchcock.
But Hopkins says his first love was music and that he came
to acting as a profession by accident. He is also an
accomplished pianist and artist who has lived for years in
California.
He was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth in 1993, giving him
the formal title Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Hopkins won on Sunday over the late Chadwick Boseman, who
had been the presumed front runner for a posthumous, first Oscar
in his final role in jazz drama “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
((jill.serjeant1@thomsonreuters.com; 310 491 7279;))
Keywords: AWARDS OSCARS/ACTOR
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