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Bankrate: Are you recognized now wherever you go?
Sir Anthony
Hopkins: One day, years ago, I was pulled
over for speeding in New Mexico. I was just 5
miles over the speed limit, but they see a California
license plate and they get you. It was 1989 and
this cop says: "You were going 5 miles over
the speed limit," and then he says, "I
know you from somewhere. My God, it's you isn't
it? Hannibal Lecter?" I said yes, and he
said, "I'm still going to give you a ticket."
So I said in Lecter's voice: "Thank you,
what's your address ... I'll come and see you
sometime." I think there are certain parts
of the country like New Mexico, Texas, that they'll
get you anyway if you come from California and
if you've got a Jaguar, a fast car ... they'll
pull you over for something.
Bankrate: But you must consider yourself lucky in that you've been acting for so long and have had such a successful career?
Sir Anthony Hopkins: I must have tapped into something when I was younger. Now my passion is music. I compose and I paint. I have an exhibition down in San Antonio -- I'm selling it like hell! I actually have a concert of four big pieces at the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra too. So my wife has turned the key in me to do this. It initially started out to help some friends of hers in San Antonio, a young couple, so all these things are part of my life now. And every time I think I'll stop acting, somebody gives me a script, so I don't know if I'll ever really stop acting.
Bankrate: Was there a film that changed your life or made you want to get into this business?
Sir Anthony Hopkins: I saw a movie when I was a kid about 12. It was a sentimental one with Charlie Chaplin called "Limelight." My parents sent me to see it. When I was in school, I was so hopeless; I didn't know what time of day it was. I couldn't play sports or understand what anyone was talking about. My father worried about me because I was an only child. I felt pretty lonely. But I could play the piano and paint. And write. So I was creative.
I went to see "Limelight," about
a failed vaudeville guy who rescues this young
girl from suicide. He dies in the end while she
goes on to success and it touched me so deeply
and profoundly that it started to change my life.
I wrote a letter to Chaplin, who was living in
Switzerland because he'd just been kicked out
of America. And I got a letter back from him that
said "thank you for your nice letter."
Some 40-odd years later, I was sitting in the
Bay House doing "Chaplin" with Robert
Downey, Jr. There was a knock on my trailer door
and the director said "you've just been nominated
for an Oscar." If someone had told me that
40 years to the month that that would have happened,
I would have said they were crazy. I'm convinced
that life is an illusion, some kind of dream,
a fabric that we weave for ourselves.
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