TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
Now we're going to hear from her "Silence Of The Lambs" co-star Sir Anthony Hopkins. He played the cannibalizing serial killer Hannibal Lecter. If that name has rung a bell lately, it might be because you've been hearing it on the campaign trail.
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DONALD TRUMP: "Silence Of The Lambs." Has anyone ever seen "The Silence Of The Lambs"? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? Excuse me. I'm about to have a friend for dinner - as this poor doctor walked by.
MOSLEY: Hannibal Lecter relished recounting his meals as a way to terrify others.
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ANTHONY HOPKINS: (As Hannibal Lecter) A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
MOSLEY: Terry spoke to Hopkins in 1991. She asked him how he came up with the character's voice.
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HOPKINS: When I was assured that the part was on offer to me, I started to work on it and simply to learn the lines and think about it. And it was such a well-written part, and the story was so compelling that when I - after the first reading, I heard the voice of Hannibal Lecter. It's sort of - I heard it in my head. I saw vision of it. I saw what he looked like - well, not strictly within the first reading. But let's say maybe two or three readings of the script because my work is kind of quite simple. I just learn it, you know, before I start filming - just learn the text, learn the words. And the voice came. And for some reason - I don't know why - the voice sort of - the voice, in fact, identified the character for me. And I saw within a few more days what he looked like, the hair being slicked back and the way he moved, his grace and elegance.
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
Describe what you did with your voice.
HOPKINS: Well, it was one of the - there's one line which, I think, is seen on the trailers, and I said, I'll help you catch him, Clarice. I didn't know what it was. It was just a kind of tone. And there's a speech where he has - he says - one of the speeches that made me understand the man was - he said, you know what you look like to me with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube, a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. And I thought, that's it. That's the character.
GROSS: You know, there's something both very effete, very scary and very purring...
HOPKINS: Yes. Yes.
GROSS: ...About the voice.
HOPKINS: Yes. Well...
GROSS: It's a purr.
HOPKINS: The thing is if you're playing an evil character, if you're playing somebody who's mad or evil - well, let's just take the first part. If you're playing somebody who's mad, the thing is not to play him mad but to play the opposite. Play him as ultra-sane. If you're playing somebody who's evil, play the good side of him. And that makes him more scary because you humanize him because nobody is all evil. Nobody is all good, whatever those terms mean. But nobody is all one thing. So what I do as an actor is to find out what the other side of the character is. And I found out with Lecter that, in fact, I think his problem is or his peculiar psychology is that he is so in control of himself mentally, spiritually, physically, whichever way. He's so totally in control of every aspect of his thinking that he is completely mad because nobody can be in that much control. It's as if he is so sane, he's flipped over into the world of the dark and the irrational.
GROSS: Now, I don't know if this is connected to the control you see the characters having, but you rarely blink in the movie. I mean, the eyes have a fixed stare, and they're wide open all the time.
HOPKINS: Yes. Well, I don't know. I didn't analyze much about the part. I mean, I just had a hunch on how to play him. First of all, when you're playing a character like this, you have to like him. The actor has to somehow like him. And I think there's something very terrifying about people who are unblinking. It's that they are so certain, they have no doubts, no uncertainty. And they're so certain that it makes them terrifying. If you look at all the great monsters political leaders in our century, you know...
GROSS: One of which you've played.
HOPKINS: Yes.
GROSS: Yes.
HOPKINS: Old Adolf, yes. They are - they rise to power because they're so certain. They have no doubts. Their minds are already made up. Somebody said of Hitler - she - a journalist who interviewed Hitler in 1936 before the war - she said, Hitler has in his library 1,000 books. He hasn't read any one of them. But, of course, he doesn't need to because his mind is already made up. And I find that the most apocalyptic, frightening vision of a man. And I think it's the same with Lecter. He knows with absolute certainty what he is and what everyone else is around him.
MOSLEY: That's Anthony Hopkins from an archive interview with Terry Gross. We'll be back with more of that interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF HOWARD SHORE AND MUNICH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA'S "FINALE")
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, we're listening to Terry's 1991 interview with Anthony Hopkins.
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GROSS: You've said that you really liked working with Jonathan Demme. Is there any kind of direction that he gave you that is different from what you're used to getting? Is there something different about the style that he works in?
HOPKINS: I think the great hallmark for me, anyway, of the great sort of positive for me is when directors - it's not that they exactly leave you alone, but what they do, they let you develop the character. And it's really a question of trust. And what I felt with Jonathan was that he had total trust in me as an actor. And because he paid me that compliment, I had total trust in him as a director. He would listen to some of my suggestions that I wanted to do. And, you know, he - there were two ideas I came up with that he thought were excellent, and he let me get on with them.
GROSS: Are those the ideas that you mentioned?
HOPKINS: Well, no, it was just - he asked me, he said, how do you feel about what - how would you like to first be seen, you know, when we - the film spends a lot of time talking about Lecter before they see him. And I said, well, if you don't mind, I said, I'd like to just be seen standing right in the middle of the cell, as if I'm waiting for her. And he said, God, that's weird. He said, what? I said, well, it's a - it's the most terrifying thing I can think of, is the very monster that she's listened to and heard about - when she actually goes towards him and she comes into eye contact, comes into the area of his cell, that he is staring straight at her with a nice smile on his face. And I sensed my own psyche, whatever that means, that that's the most terrifying thing. That's the sort of base of my nightmares, in a way, or it was as a child.
GROSS: Somebody waiting for you?
HOPKINS: Somebody waiting for me in the corner or at the top of the stairs or - I used to have a dream. I had opened the door when I was a child. There would be banging on the front door of the house in the dark. It was always moonlight. And as I opened the door there would be nobody there, but across the street, in a window three floors up in the building opposite, there was a face staring out at me and smiling. That was the most terrifying nightmare. In itself, it doesn't sound frightening, but there's something strange about that. And this is what I wanted to do to the audience. I wanted them to just take that moment of horror when they see Lecter, that they don't see somebody with blood dripping off his mouth. They see a very pleasant, normal-looking man standing to attention in the middle of a cell. Very weird.
GROSS: You know, I've seen several articles in which you've been compared to Richard Burton, who, like you, is from Wales. Is that why you're compared, because you're both from the same place?
HOPKINS: Well, we're from the same town.
GROSS: Oh, so did he mean - did he have, like, significance to you when you were coming of age, wanting to act?
HOPKINS: Yes. He represented to me freedom because I couldn't function in school. I mean, I - well, I'm making it sound terrible, actually. I mean, I wasn't - it wasn't that bad, but, I mean, I was a bit lonely. You know, I just wanted to get out of where I was because it didn't seem I had much future. I had no qualifications from school. What could I be? So Burton represented to me glamour, freedom and all that, and I - the only time I met him was when I went to ask him for his autograph when I was about 15 years of age. And I remember thinking, when I left his house - he'd signed my autograph book - that, God, I wish I could be like that. You know, I wish I could be him, or I wish I could be famous or something like that. And it was the rocket fuel, I guess, or that resentment or anger or whatever it was that drove me on. And ironically, the strange thing was, as fate will have it, I next met Richard Burton in the dressing room in New York in the Plymouth Theatre. I'd started the play "Equus" in New York in 1974, and Richard Burton took over from - took over in 1976. So it was a very strange twist of fate. And that's the second and last time I met him.
GROSS: Another one of those highly educated parts, I'll point out (laughter).
HOPKINS: Yes, he was. He was.
GROSS: You were playing the psychiatrist.
HOPKINS: Yes. But it's extraordinary meeting Richard in those days because we - the day I was sitting in the same dressing room, and he said, why haven't we ever worked before? Why haven't we ever worked together? And he said, we come from the same town. I said, yeah. He said, my God. He said, this is weird. But sadly, I never worked with him. I mean, it's a great loss that he died.
GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
HOPKINS: Thank you. Pleasant dreams.
MOSLEY: Anthony Hopkins spoke to Terry Gross in 1991. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll continue our classic films and movie icons series. We'll feature interviews from our archive of two of Hollywood's most respected actors, Meryl Streep and Sidney Poitier. Streep holds the record as the most nominated performer in Academy Award history, and Poitier was the first Black man to win the Oscar for best actor. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN MORRIS' "THE BELGIAN CIRCUS EPISODE")
MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Ann Marie Baldonado, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Monique Nazareth and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN MORRIS' "THE BELGIAN CIRCUS EPISODE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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